Gardening Notes for February & March

How do you get your ‘gardening fix’ in these dark, dank and dreary winter months?

Do you tidy and clean the shed or greenhouse, sorting through the seed packets and washing the empty plant pots, ready for the new season? Do you look after your gardening tools, cleaning them and sharpening secateurs, spades and hoes and oiling bare wood handles? Do you turn the compost, ready for use when the time comes? Or do you prefer indoor activities, poring over seed and bulb catalogues, planning what to plant and where? Or visit gardens online, looking for guidance and inspiration?

When the sun shines, do you wander round the garden, seeking signs of growth, bulbs poking shoots up, buds on spring-flowering shrubs? Do you gaze out the window, thinking about what needs to be done and wondering when you can start, compiling lists and waiting, as I do? Or have you already done all these things?

By February, there is plenty to do: pruning winter-flowering shrubs such as Viburnum bodnantense and Mahonia after flowering, dividing bulbs after flowering, such as snowdrops that need to be planted ‘in the green’, pruning hardy evergreen hedges or renovating overgrown deciduous ones, cutting back deciduous grasses left over the winter and removing dead grass from evergreen ones.

In March we can get going, lifting and dividing overgrown clumps of perennials, ready for Godmanchester Garden Club plant swap session in April, or just cutting them back, pruning back buddleia to a framework of branches and planting summer flowering bulbs. I should repair lawn edges, rake out moss and mow when dry and finally begin to sow outside the seeds of hardy annuals. Then I need to prune ivy, which supports insects in winter with flowers and shelter and birds in spring with berries.

Josephine

This article is reproduced from February’s issue of the Godmanchester parish church’s magazine with the kind permission of the author, Josephine Becker.