News - Page 142
Plant tulips this month by the bucketful to bring one of the year's most breathtaking spectacles to your back yard. Tulip bulbs are planted later, to avoid the disfiguring disease tulip fire – but from this month onwards it's all systems go.
You'll find a superb range of varieties on sale in our garden centre, in all colours from yellow-edged mahogany red 'Abu Hassan' to pure white 'Purissima', pretty p...
The first frosts are just around the corner – so take a look around your garden and make sure your precious plants are well protected with our top winter survival tips.
- Hold off cutting back fuchsias and penstemons till next spring, leaving this year's dead stems and foliage in place. The extra protection will prevent the frost penetrating the ground and killing their roots
- Tie up kniphofia...
Sow garlic now for a generous crop of fat, fragrant bulbs next summer, as they need a good spell of frost to encourage them to split into cloves. There are three different types of garlic to choose from:
Hardneck garlic is the gourmet choice, with particularly good flavour. Try early-maturing 'Chesnok Red' or the spicy flavours of 'Red Sicilian'. Their flower...
Make leafmould from all those autumn leaves currently raining down on your lawn, as it's a waste of a truly precious garden resource to burn them or send them out with the green waste.
Leafmould acts as a wonderful soil conditioner, opening up heavy clay and holding on to moisture in light, sandy soils. Bulbs like snowdrops adore a leafmould mulch in spring as it imitates conditions on their native wood...
What to do in the garden in November:
It may seem chilly out there but the summer's warmth is still in the soil: it's a great time to buy and plant new additions to your garden. Here are some other jobs to be getting on with this month:
General tasks:
Clean out bird boxes
November's plant of the month is trees, often viewed with some trepidation among gardeners who don't have much room – but it's a myth that you need lots of space to have a tree. In fact there's a tree for every possible situation, with some even small enough to grow in containers.
Trees really shine out at this time of year, with leaves turning every shade from deepest purple through oranges, reds, and...
It's autumn clear-up time and your chance to put your garden to bed so it can slowly subside into its winter slumber. After the full-on party-time of summer, it's a chance to have a good sweep through, pick up all the rubbish and evict any unwanted pests before they make themselves too comfortable. Prepare your garden well for winter and it'll wake up in spring in perfect health ready to do it all again next year. Here's what to do:
R...
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Plant lilies in containers and you'll be able to enjoy their magnificent display up close next summer, including that heady, intoxicating perfume. Growing these spectacular flowers in pots is a great technique for making the most of their many fine qualities: drop them, pot and all, into gaps in the border just as they're about to flower, or move them right by the back door where you'll get the full force of the scent as you leave the house.
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Plant spring bedding to get next year's display under way. There are lots of bare-root plants and plugs on the garden centre shelves right now, and since they're all hardy and can overwinter where you plant them it's a really economical way of making sure your garden is packed with colour early in the year. Here are some of the best:
Wallflowers: The familiar sprays of these beautifully scented cottage garden favourites set o...
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Plant for autumn colour to keep your garden looking gorgeous well into the first frosts. It's a great time of year to get new shrubs and trees into the ground and there's a fantastic range in our garden centre, all brilliantly colourful at this time of year. Here are a few of our favourites:
Toffee apple tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) adds scent to the autumn display, releasing a sweet perfume like toffee apples as it drops its yellow, red a...
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