Garden Tips

Spring Gardening Tips

With the arrival of spring comes the beautiful sight of budding flowers and blossoming trees. Your garden begins to brush aside the monotone shades of winter and the promise of colour begins to become evident once more. What should you be doing to get your garden ship-shape for the forthcoming months? Read on for our handy horticultural tips and advice.

To get the most from your spring garden, add sensuous smelling plants that will fill your garden with their sweet aroma. The Royal Horticultural Society recommend shrubs such as Christmas box (Sarcococca confusa), the winter honeysuckle (Lonicera x purpusii), wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox), as well as the many beautiful species of Daphne which are sure to leave your garden smelling better than the best Parisian perfumery!

If you're putting in new plants this season, don't forget that they'll be relying on you for food and water. Add a liberal sprinkling of compost to your planting hole and give them a slow release, general fertilizer. Remember to water them well! See Planting Tips to ensure you give your new additions the best possible welcome to your garden!

Try to add several sculptural plants such as grasses, ferns and bamboos to your garden over this season as their overall shape and height, plus the fact that they are easy to maintain, provide the perfect backdrop for summer annuals if you want to add a splash of colour. Check out Japanese Garden Style and Exotic Garden for other ways of incorporating bamboo into your garden design.

Plant Bulbs for early colour in your spring garden. Aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) and snowdrops (Galanthus) compete to be the first to flower, followed by narcissi and tulips. Bulbs are joined by the earliest flowering perennials, such as hellebores and later as the bulbs die down other herbaceous plants fill the gaps.

When adding new plants to your garden, remember to protect them from slugs and snails. There are all sorts of organic methods such as tempting them into a trap with beer or an upturned grapefruit, crunchy gravel, or nematodes - biological controllers. Nothing is fool proof, but clearing away dead vegetation over winter removes their favourite lodgings and keeps down numbers. If you're not squeamish you can go out at night with a torch and a bucket and physically collect them.