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Seasons
March to April
Early Spring
Spring has sprung and it's time to get busy in the numerous sunny days, avoiding the April showers!
- Enjoy Mother’s Day and don’t forget to pick up one of our gorgeous Mothers Day hanging baskets or containers bursting with spring bedding.
- Compost and farmyard manure are excellent forms of organic matter for boosting your soil and mulching your borders.
- Pot grown shrubs, perennials, trees and fruit have their own established root system and can now be planted all year round but the sooner they can be established the sooner you can enjoy them.
- Get busy sowing hardy annuals, vegetable, herbs and wild flower seeds.
- Plant shallots, onion sets, and early potatoes
- You may want to plant out some of our sweet peas in April.
- Get ready to plant your summer flowering bulbs.
- Whether sowing new lawns or repairing bare patches we have plant seed, feed and turf available at this time.
- Garden tools need checking, sharpening and sometimes replacing.
- Now is the last chance to plant bare root hedging
- Spring bulbs like snowdrops, aconites, muscari, iris and tulips are now emerging in pots available to plant out.
- Top dress pots and containers with a good compost or repot if required.
- Download our Spring Interest Guide
Late April - early May
Late Spring
If you are looking for a little something to brighten up your garden look no further than our bespoke pot and container arrangements.
- Potted summer bedding has arrived in all its colour and glory ready for you to make up your hanging baskets or containers. Geranium, fuchsia, bacopa, nemesia, osteospermum petunia, begonia and so forth. Do watch out for frost and keep them covered or in a green house if it is forecast.
- Sow your Mediterranean herbs seeds now.
- Bring your Alpine planter out of storage and replace any Alpines that did not overwinter or perhaps come and choose one of our newly planted alpine bowls.
- It is also time to get back into the lawn mowing regime, and a spring feed is due.
- Do not overlook getting netting and fleece for the protection of your tender plants fruit and vegetables.
- If you didn’t get time to sow all your vegetables don’t worry, we will have lots of seeded small plants to grow on from cabbages to sweetcorn as well as tomatoes, courgettes, melons, peppers aubergines and so forth.
- Keep an eye out for aphids and take action when needed!
- Download our Spring Interest Guide
June
Early Summer
We welcome the longest day of the year, and more time to spend in the garden!
- Frosts are long gone we hope, so it should now be safe to position your hanging baskets and containers outside. We will have an abundant collection of bedding plants for you to relish making up your summer pots.
- Climbing plants are starting to bud, so it is a great time to plant your new clematis, wisteria, or honeysuckle if you haven’t already.
- Make sure that you have plenty of stakes, plant supports and obelisks as your vegetables and perennials will have a growth spurt this month.
- Don’t forget to keep an eye on the vegetable patch. Keep it well fed with tomato, comfrey or seaweed feed. A good top up with manure would be beneficial.
July - August
Late Summer
This is often the hottest period of the year and a great time to sit out and enjoy your garden. You may want to indulge in a few things for the garden. Garden furniture, mirrors, and maybe even a water feature.
- Keep up the feeding of roses with a liquid feed containing potassium to encourage flowering and fruiting and not too much lax, floppy growth at this stage.
- The lawn will thank you for a quick-acting summer feed to help it get through the dry spells.
- Treat yourself to new pair of secateurs to keep up with the regular deadheading required and for pruning your early flowering shrubs as they finish.
- The late summer asters, helenium’s, echinacea, leucanthemums, rudbeckia, verbena and anemone should be looking fabulous as they take over the colour palette in your garden, if you find you have late summer gaps take advantage of the planting opportunity with some late summer perennials.
- Why not bring in some cut flowers from the garden to brighten up rooms inside the house or one of our indoor plants.
September - October
Autumn
Plenty of beautiful rich vibrant autumn foliage and berried displays to warm the heart. Autumn, winter bedding is in stock and ready to use in late season hanging baskets and containers, or to liven up borders and displays.
- Despite most nursery stock being pot grown with a root system so it can be planted throughout the year, it is now traditionally the autumn planting season. As the weather cools down the plant growth is also slowing down so things planted now will concentrate on establishing roots rather than top growth. It is the perfect time for beginning that big project in the garden. Maybe a new border or some fruit trees and bushes.
- Bulbs, bulbs and more bulbs! From late August we have spring-flowering bulbs aplenty; come and check out the huge range of bulbs we stock. Simple bulb planning can give you colour right through until May. Starting with snowdrops, iris, crocus and narcissus to early, mid and late tulips. Why not try a burst of Fritillaria Imperials or some grand alliums. Bulbs can be incorporated to use as cut flowers, to grow in woodlands, grown for their fragrance or simply colour. Consider planting a long flowering lasagne pot by layering your bulbs starting with the latest flowering tulips at the bottom and the earliest flowering iris, crocus or snowdrops at the top.
- Garlic and onions need to be planted now.
- It is really a good time for rejuvenating tired lawns with seed or turf ready for next year.
- We have a selection of netting which comes in useful to cover ponds before leaf fall gets underway.
- Download our Autumn Interest guide.
Christmas
Take time to enjoy the run up to Christmas, and join us in keeping warm with hot chocolate, mulled cider, and a mince pie or three. Your Christmas shopping list for the Nursery:
- Make your own holly wreath or centre table decoration on one of our courses or buy one of our festive arrangements.
- Take your time browsing our cosy shop packed full of lovely Christmassy things, cards and gift wrap, decorations and candles, food, and gifts galore.
- Select your British Christmas tree! Select from our potted and cut ranges. We have Nordmann and Fraser Fir usually classed as non-drop trees and the traditional Norway Spruce.
- Look forward to another great gardening year ahead…
November to February
Winter At the Nurseries
On wet winter days you can plan your gardening year and may like to book some of our Gardening Club events and talks.
- Do not underestimate how beautiful a winter garden can be. If your garden lacks winter colour now is the time to change that. There are some magnificent winter gardens to visit for inspiration where you will see bright orange, red and lime green cornus stems contrasting against, black Pittosporum Tom Thumb and textural grasses. Christmas box or sarcococca produce heavenly fragrant flowers early. Silver birch bark glows in the winter. Viburnum burkwoodii will flower on bare stems, catkins will adorn the hazels and Garrya elliptica and evergreen ferns will look lush against the hellebores and the snowdrops and winter aconite will start to emerge.
- November is the time to plant tulip bulbs, they go in the ground later than other spring flowering bulbs.
- Bare root hedging arrives in November, native, deciduous, and evergreen. This is the easiest and cheapest way to establish a hedge, but you only have until April to plant bare root plants.
- Buy fleece membrane to protect tender plants ready for spring frosts.
- Check your winter protection, fences, stakes, ties and supports are still working after any severe weather.
- The vegetable garden never sleeps and now is the time to start forcing rhubarb and mulching round the pot with farm yard manure, chit potato tubers, prepare vegetable seed beds, and sow some vegetables under cover.
- Stock up on rose and shrub feed it is imperative. February is a good time to add a slow release general feed to your shrubs, trees and roses.
- Remember winter can be a tough time for birds in terms of water and food, so keep supplies well topped up.
- Stock up on slug pellets and organic alternative to protect the new spring shoots that are appearing remembering February the 14th is slug day not valentines in the gardening calendar!
- Download our Winter Interest guide.