Owner of Barnsdale Gardens, Nick Hamilton, shares what to check off your spring gardening checklist.
Words: Nick Hamilton. Images: Steve Hamilton
As gardeners we spend a lot of our time looking ahead, not being able to wait for the next exciting event to happen in our garden. You’ll know by now that I like a good plan, so it will come as no surprise when I tell you that there are things that need doing now that will benefit your garden, not just for spring but for the rest of the year too. We get lots of sunny and warmish days at this time of year, so there is no excuse!
Your Spring checklist
Dig productive areas
For those of you with space to grow veg, this should now be starting to fill up as planting and sowing outside picks up at pace. Therefore it is important to complete the cultivation of any ground that has not yet been done, otherwise you might find that you could fall behind.
Cut back perennials
The herbaceous perennials have burst into life, so any that have not yet had last year’s growth completely cut back need to be cut back now or those tatty-looking old stems will detract from your beautiful plants later in the season.
Cover peaches
If you are a peach lover like me then you not only want your tree to produce lots of fruit but also to look good, which means we need to keep peach leaf curl at bay. This is a fungal disease that distorts the foliage with the spores being carried in rain, so I cover my fan-trained tree with a sheet of polythene attached to a batten, which is attached to the fence just above the peach tree.
This sheet is tied up to the batten until there is forecast of rain, at which point it is untied to cover the tree, stopping any water hitting the foliage. It gets tied up and untied as required, until the weather warms. Make sure you leave the cover off when it’s in flower, to allow pollination or, if you prefer, cover and hand pollinate the flowers.
Keep on top of weeds
It is a fact of life that weeds will generally burst into growth sooner and then grow much faster than cultivated plants and cause real problems if left to get out of hand to smother new spring shoots. Therefore, it is important to regularly keep on top of them and this can be easily done with a quick run round with a hoe.
If you prefer you can wait just a little while until they are fractionally bigger and remove by hand. Remember, it is possible for most weeds to harbour pests and disease, as well as use up valuable moisture and nutrients from the ground.
Prune coloured stem shrubs
Both cornus and salix give fantastic shows of coloured stems in winter and spring but they do need cutting back. There is no hard and fast rule as to exactly when you should do this, as it is all about getting the most out of your shrub.
Prune when they start to shoot in the spring, but wait just a little bit to maximise the beauty of the coloured stems, as it’s a balance between still looking good but not allowing too much unnecessary growth that is then removed.
Keep daffs flowering
If you want to prolong the flowering of these wonderful spring bulbs then it is vital that you regularly deadhead. There is no advantage in allowing them to set seed, so as soon as a flower goes over, just with your forefinger and thumb, nip off the spent flowers and pop them onto the compost heap.
Once the flowers come to an end, deadhead anything that is left to do and leave the leaves to die back naturally. Don’t tie them up or cut them off while they are still green, as they are making vital energy to store for next year’s flowering.
Nick Hamilton is the owner of Barnsdale Gardens in Rutland, an eight-acre site featuring 38 individual gardens to explore, plus tea rooms, a nursery and lots more. For more information, visit barnsdalegardens.co.uk.
Read more of Nick’s gardening advice here!
