Thank you to everyone who took part in the Horticultural Society’s first show since Covid and to everyone who came along to support it. Our autumn and spring shows are incredibly important to maintaining the Society and are a key event in the village calendar.

We had hundreds of entries from flowers to fruit and vegetables, cookery from bakes to jams and pickle, and beautiful flower arrangements. The autumn show focuses on dahlia classes (in spring it’s narcissus) and there were some colourful – sometimes bench-breaking – exhibits. Dahlia classes can look daunting but we put an explanatory chart on our website and if you’ve never grown them, they add vibrant and welcome colour to the border from late August right up to the first frosts. We missed some of our regular exhibitors and enthusiastic dahlia growers, but were pleased that Carolyn Clayton won trophies for flowers AND fruit this year.

Our five roses classes are always popular and the sight and scent of hybrid tea, floribunda and shrub roses amassed on the bench is incredible. Arguably the most popular classes in our autumn show, Jo Wilson walked away with the trophy this year.

It’s not all about the plants of course. As well as fruits from apples to blackberries and a bunch more besides, people brought a wealth of vegetables to the show benches this year. We had the longest bean and the heaviest pumpkin, tomatoes and potatoes, squashes of some very unusual shapes and more. And with entries in nearly every class, Hugh Richards took away the hotly contested cup.

Miniature and full size flower arrangements are also a mainstay of our shows and given the time of year, brightened up the show. Committee Secretary Elizabeth Ellis won the trophy for the section, while Avril Biggins was awarded best floral art exhibit.

We also like to encourage people’s baking and photography skills. I’ve discovered the complexity of keeping a sourdough starter alive AND making an edible loaf with it is beyond me, and I enjoyed (but lost) a private family bakeoff in the cupcakes class and had a go at making onion marmalade for the first time. This is the essence of our shows – have a go, you may surprise yourself!

Well done to Maureen Floyd who won the cookery section and Adrian Beckingsale who took home the photography trophy.

If you’ve ever wondered what a horticultural show is all about, have thought about exhibiting or just want to see what other people grow and find out how they do it, our shows are a great way to start. Or come along to one of our evening speaker events on the first Wednesday of the month. You can find all the details on our website.

…and they’re here.

The dreaded (and dreadful) box tree caterpillar (Cydalima perspectalis) has arrived in Dedham. Still relatively new to Britain, not found in private gardens until 2011, it has already made it into the RHS’ top three pests of the year. Active from April to October, the caterpillars can completely defoliate box (Buxus) plants before attacking the wood and causing the plant to die; so the sooner we spot it and treat it the better.

Look for white webbing spun among leaves and twigs, which hide pupae and greenish-yellow caterpillars merrily munching on your plants. You might also spot the mushroom brown moths lurking deep in the bottom of the bushes.

You may have seen coverage of measures that Ham House is taking to deal with the problem on its iconic box hedging (they have regular updates on their website – this month, jackdaws!) and they – like topiary speciliast @James_Todman on instagram – work with the European Boxwood and Topiary Society to raise awareness and recommend solutions to combat the pest.

There are traps and treatments – available to the amateur gardener and professional – for different stages of the pest’s lifecycle with most considering Bacillus thuringiensis to be the best option for killing the caterpillars.

If you grow box, please check it and take action as soon as you can.

As we head into autumn, there’s still plenty of plants doing their stuff in the garden. My dahlias are in full bloom but need deadheading regularly to keep flowering until the first frosts. I’ve also been growing chrysanthemums this year, which always seem to get away from me before I can tie them and keep them growing straight. I’m not sure about the scent but the blooms can be as spectactular as dahlias – although they get really bashed about in wind and rain.

Complementing the colours of dahlias and chrysanthemums are grasses, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Flamingo’ and ‘Malepartus’: towering a couple of metres with dark pink and purple flower stalks that glow in the sun and – as we move deeper into autumn – will become ostrich-like plumes of white that last well into November.

September onwards is time to plant spring bulbs, except tulips which should wait until November when it’s colder and less chance of them getting the fungal disease Tulip fire (Botrytis tulipae if you want to get Latin about it). Daffodils, crocuses, alliums and lilies can all go into the border now, although I find crocuses a bit irritating as a flower. They look pretty but are so delicate and out so early, they invetibly get completely destroyed by spring wind and rain. Fortunately (for them) the bees love their early nectar and pollen, so they earn their place. Purple alliums look great with the fresh fronds of ferns in May and June, so why not chuck both into a new fernery?

Though I love their delicate checkerboard pattern and brown-purple flowers, I’ve never had much luck with snakeshead fritillaries in the borders; only a few of them seem to come up and they rarely last more than a single season. So instead they go into bulb ‘lasagnes’ in pots. Start with six inches of compost, then a layer of the largest and latest flowering bulbs like daffodils, another layer of compost, then smaller bulbs, and so up to the top where crocuses, fritilalries and snowdrops can be planted.

If you didn’t manage to trim your lavender plants in August, September is really the last chance to do it. Shear back the spent flowers and make sure to take off some of the current year’s growth to stop the bush becoming leggy. You can take back two to three centimetres but make sure you only cut back to the point at which you can see growth.

I don’t really grow a lot of them, but now is a good time to sow hardy annuals so they get a good start in spring for bigger, stronger plants and better flowers for summer. I do like white umbellifers like Orlaya grandiflora and Ammi majus, which need a cold period before they germinate, and am sowing Daucus carota for the first time.

With the soil still warm, this is a great month to lift, divide and replant perennials. If they are overgrown or tired-looking, this will refresh them and improve flowering next year but also give you extra plants for free! I’ll be splitting up Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ corms, Epimedium, Hosta, Hemerocallis (daylilies) and Primula for better flowers. I can also divide any grasses that are outgrowing their space – often they die off in the middle of the clump, so dividing them will let me discard the centre and replant the outer pieces.

And finally, rake and aerate, feed and tackle moss in the lawn. You can use a spring-tined rake if you’re feeling energetic and have a smaller lawn, but may want to invest in a machine to help with bigger gardens. Scarifying (raking) will take out the thatch of dead grass, moss and other debris that has built up in the lawn – it’s going to look a mess, but autumn’s mix of warmth and wet will give it plenty of time to recover before winter.

Aerate by pushing a fork about 6 inches into the ground, giving it a wiggle and repeating every foot or so. This will help loose the compacted ground that results from all the mowing and playing, but also gets air in to help grass grow. Finally, top dress with a weed and moss killer, feed and a sprinkling of seed.

All this should set you up for the end of the season and a great start in spring.

As I write this in early June, we’ve just enjoyed a glorious fortnight of summer-like weather giving the weeds – well-watered by that wet May – the chance to make strides in borders and beds and on the plot. Fortunately the wet and warmth has also given a welcome boost to a new Deutzia gracilis which is flowering its merry head off, while an experiment with Dutch iris (Iris x hollandica) has rewarded me with masses of tall and bright, yellow and white flowers.

The borders are full enough now that most of the weeds are supressed (or more likely just hidden), but there’s still a little work to do to properly conquer the garden this month. Once the flowers have faded, cut delphinium flower spikes back to where the flowers started and you can see side shoots that might make more flowers later in the season. You can treat foxgloves and verbascum the same.

Give wisteria its summer prune to keep it flowering well by cutting the whippy tendrils back to about 15cm and shortening any of the main stems that are outgrowing their space. Give it some tomato feed after pruning if it looks like it needs a boost.

It’s been a few years since I last divided my bearded iris (Iris germanica) and they are getting a bit congested. Dividing helps reinvigorate them and doing it now gives the plants enough time to put on new growth before winter sets in. Lifting them also gives me a chance to give them a proper weeding and yank out all those bits of grass and perennial weeds that I’ve only really chopped the tops off before now.

Get a fork well beneath the rhizomes and lift them clear of the ground. Shake any excess soil off and start separating them so that each plant has a fan of leaves, and a healthy-looking rhizome with a number of roots growing from it. Don’t be afraid to just snap rhizomes apart as long as they have some leaves, but discard any that are shrivelled. Shorten the leaves to about 15cm and trim the roots a little.

To plant, dig a shallow hole with enough room to spread the roots out. These need to be below the soil but the top of the rhizome should sit above, where it can bake in the sunshine. You may find it easier to rest the rhizome on a small mound of soil in the hole. Aim to plant taller varieties 30cm apart and dwarf ones about 15cm apart to give them room to expand in the next few years. Watering in gently can help settle soil around each plant but it’s not essential. With the proper care every few years, irises will continue to give a stunning display.

Despite the challenging start to the season, the garden is quickly catching up and there have been some great successes in the first half of the year. I’ve been trying a new feeding regime for my roses this year to see what impact it has on their growth and flowering. I started off with a dose of Growmore (fish, blood and bone is a good organic option) early on and have since been giving tomato feed every two weeks. With 100-plus roses around the garden (no, I’ve no idea how there got to be so many either), this takes about 3 hours and is quite a commitment. Although it’s still a bit early to judge whether flowering is improved, I have noticed a lot more new stems. I’m especially pleased with the effect on an old climbing rose (Rosa ‘Guinée’) which has always grown on a single stem to produce an almost umbrella shape. My regular feeding is encouraging two additional stems at the base and shoots along the whole length of the single stem, so the plant will bush out in time.

How did June arrive so quickly? It feels like I’ve barely started and – not to depress anyone – the longest day is almost upon us. From there it’s a downhill slide to Christmas.

Fortunately, a look round the garden offers plenty to cheer one up: the roses are in full bloom in shades of red, pink, white and yellow (I heard that! There’s nothing wrong with yellow); deep indigo spires of delphiniums; jewel-coloured clematis wired to walls; glossy, rich crimson Turk’s cap lily (Lilium martagon) ‘Claude Shride’; and foxgloves – lots and lots of self-seeded spikes of purple, creamy pink and white.

There’s also plenty of pruning. Some of the garden has gone over by now and June is a good time to prune spring-flowering shrubs, now they’ve finished their show. These include Kolkwitzia and Philadelphus, as well as – in my garden – flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), Weigela ‘Bristol Ruby’ and a couple of unknown Deutzia plants. These flower on the previous year’s wood, so pruning now gives new growth over the summer enough time to ripen sufficiently to flower well next year.

I’ll also take my secateurs to the Spiraea ‘Arguta’ (also called bridal wreath), which you’ll remember from the April issue and has finished its spectacular display. It’s a fairly mature specimen, so the idea is to cut back about one in three of the older, fatter stems to encourage new growth from the base and shorten other flowered stems to help it bush out, neaten it up or reduce the height and spread.

Now that all that frost is done with (finally), you can also cut back tender shrubs such as Penstemon and hardy fuchsias. The former doesn’t do well in my garden and I think the “frostiest April for 60 years” has done for most of them, but perhaps I just need to find the right place for it. I have a much hardier Fuchsia magellanica var. gracilis ‘Aurea’ with golden leaves and simple scarlet and purple flowers; I take stems back by about a third now to encourage bushier growth.

Perennial Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) look mess after they’ve flowered, so cut the whole lot right back to the ground. Follow with mulch and a feed (liquid tomato feed is fine) to stimulate the growth of fresh new foliage and possibly even a second flush of flowers. You can do the same with hardy Geranium (the cranesbill) without which no garden is complete.

I’m going to try something new with a few of my hybrid tea roses: disbudding. Remove all the smaller buds from the cluster that forms at the shoot tip, leaving the largest one in the centre. If the flowers are as ‘show-stopping’ as some say, maybe they’ll win me some points should the Society’s Autumn Show be able to go ahead in September.

While May had its Chelsea chop in the borders, in my mini-orchard there’s the June drop, when trees naturally shed some fruit and I can thin over-congested branches for bigger fruits. I’m pinching out the side shoots of my tomato plants on the allotment: you only need to do this on cordon – also called indeterminate – varieties, which should be grown up a single stem. Bush tomatoes are more shrub-like and don’t need it.

It’s not just cutting though. June is also the time to sow biennials which put down strong roots this year and flower in the next. I’m going to try germinating wallflowers, foxgloves and beautiful umbellifer Daucus carota, the wild carrot. By the end of summer, I should be able to plant them out into the garden, giving them chance to get established before winter. All this pruning and pinching is certainly hard work, so don’t forget to relax, give yourself a pat on the back, and enjoy the fruits of your labour whenever you can.

If April saw green shoots and buds bursting forth from soil, stem and branches, then May brings flowers blooming from almost every part of the garden. There are spots in the garden at this time of year where my eye is caught by a tapestry of foliage colour: where the rusted roof of my shed contrasts with the silver grey of a water butt, catches the new red leaves of a small acer, and complements the many shades of green in what I like to call my woodland border.

But that red and green corner of foliage is now enhanced elsewhere with colour too. Azaleas and rhododendrons are unfurling finger-like pink and red buds. Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) ‘Harlem’ and ‘Brilliant’, and herbaceous and tree peonies are showing off their big blowsy, delicate flowers. Spiky Camassia leichtlinii and frothy cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) provide blue and white contrast in the cottage border, and alliums complement the fresh green fronds of hardy male ferns (Dryopteris filix-mas). If you’re lucky, your garden might have magnificent large clumps of blue Iris sibirica beside a pink Rosa ‘Mary Rose’. All with the pale blue of self-seeded forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) sprinkled – seemingly never-endingly – at their feet.

As great as it all looks right now and as good as looking at it makes me feel, the work hasn’t stopped. With the drier weather, there should be plenty of opportunity to put your hoe to the soil once a week and cut the heads of weeds where they can shrivel up and die in the sunshine. Hoeing will tackle the annual weeds, but you’ll still have to get down to soil level to fork perennial weeds out by hand.

I have a large evergreen hedge that separates my mini-orchard from the rest of the garden and this is a good time to give it a bit of a trim, but remember to check that there are no birds nesting as it’s an offence to damage or destroy them. Fortunately, though I’m not sure what kind of hedge it is, it’s not dense and is easy to look through it end to end and see what’s inside. I just want to take the hedgetrimmer to one side of it, cutting it back a couple of inches and taking a bit off the top. A good feed after cutting will help it put on new growth. I’ll do the other side next year, narrowing the whole hedge over two seasons. If you have a box (Buxus sempervirens) hedge, give it a trim too at the end of May to neaten it for summer.

If you don’t have a hedge to cut, late May is traditionally the time to give plants a ‘Chelsea Chop’. It can make herbaceous perennials bushier and stagger flowering times but needs to be done when the plant is of a reasonable size. Try it on nepeta, phlox, asters, sedums and more by pruning about a third of the plant: either take the top third off everything or every third stem of one plant or a third of a larger group.

I love Aubrieta ‘Red Cascade’ which has been flowering since March, bringing eye-catching colour to the borders ahead of the daffodils and tulips, but as it goes over, a quick trim will encourage fresh growth and flowers.

The allotment is coming on with plenty of time spent tidying it up after Christmas, but I’ll need to protect strawberry plants with straw to help keep weeds down and lift the berries off the soil and with netting to keep the birds off. In my mini-orchard, I need to hang pheromone traps in my plum and apple trees to monitor and hopefully reduce the activity of moths that can result in larvae (yes, maggots) in fruit when it comes to harvest time. I hope you have the chance to enjoy your gardens as much as I enjoy mine at this time of year – despite the work that’s needed to get it this way.

Depending on the weather (of course), April brings marvellous blossom and the blossom-like to the garden and hedgerows. It brings the first signs of the fruit harvest to come with the flowers of apple and pear covering cordons and stepovers in my mini-orchard; an older, taller greengage tree spreads white froth over the shed; and there are petals of almost-red on a small cascading flowering cherry. All this is complemented by the white flowers of a fabulous Spiraea ‘Arguta’ and pink from a flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), while tulips bring pops and spots of colour around the garden.

There’s plenty to admire in the beds and borders right now, but needless-to-say there is plenty of jobs to crack on with, so enough standing about!

A couple of quick jobs to warm up first. Stake herbaceous peonies which will be putting on plenty of growth now ready to flower in May and June – the big heads will topple over without support, especially if we get an April shower. Prune penstemons by making cuts just above fresh, new shoots at the base of the plant. If you can’t see any new shoots low down, cut just above the lowest set of leaves.

Early in the month is also a time to prune Hydrangea Macrophylla; the lacecaps and mopheads of the genus. I’ve never had much luck with growing these – or with pruning them – but I’m going to give it another go by pruning back to a healthy-looking bud or pair of buds. If the plant is well established, you could also cut out up to a third of the older, woody growth to make room for new. You can prune lavender now too, though I chopped mine back in the autumn after flowering. When you do, avoid going back into older wood but look for any new growth emerging from lower down the stems to show you how far back you could cut.

Take basal cuttings from perennials like delphiniums, dahlias, campanulas, asters and phlox by looking for shoots rising 10-12cm from the base of the clump and using a sharp knife to cut three or four as near to the base as possible. They don’t need to have root attached but if they do, they will establish more easily.

Remove any leaves that may be buried by compost and rot (killing your cutting) and pinch out the top to reduce moisture loss as the cutting roots. You can dip them in hormone rooting powder – although this isn’t necessary – and pop them at least 2.5cm deep around the edge of a pot of cutting compost.

Pop them in a propagator or under a plastic bag and mist occasionally. New growth will show you that the cuttings have rooted.

You can do this any time of year, but it’s a task that I only care to do a couple of times a year and I like to get it out of the way before I’m distracted by everything else: turn the compost. I have a pretty serious three bin system (and a mightier four bin system on the allotment that I share with a couple who are trying to corner the market in redcurrants and gooseberries). They’re not quite up to Monty’s standard but the three metre-squared bins need turning over.

Finally, a serious word about weeding. I know some of you love a dandelion and a couple of you (you know who you are) think bindweed brings a lovely splash of white to the border. But it’s time to untwine them from their chokehold on your roses, dig them out at the root, and chuck them on a bonfire or in the white sacks. It’s going to be weed, weed, weed for the next six months, so you might as well get used to it now.

So you’ve been putting off getting into the garden because it’s too cold, too wet or there’s too much Bridgerton to binge on Netflix? All valid reasons, but now you’re massively behind if you’re going to be ready for a relaxing Pimms on the lawn by summer. No pressure, but it’s spring, so time to get going.

March, with the spring equinox on 20 March and the clocks springing forward a week later (and a long Easter bank holiday the week after that) really marks the start of the gardening season and there’s plenty to do as things get growing.

It’s out with the old first: Narcissus (daffodils) will be going over, so deadhead by snapping off just behind the swelling seedpod at the top of the stem. Allow the foliage to die down naturally to feed the bulb for next year’s display. Take your shears to winter-flowering heathers, taking off the flowers and a little of the top growth so the plants don’t get leggy but bush out instead.

And then in with the new: as well as the catkins of hazel (Corylus avellana) and goat or pussy willow (Salix caprea), blossom will be on my Amelanchier lamarckii which usually looks incredible by the end of the month and the Aubrieta ‘Purple Cascade’ will be doing its stuff too. The bees appreciate the early bounty, and everything is starting to leaf up again.

With all this exuberance, get supports into the border now to encourage plants to grow up through them rather than try and force everything into better behaviour in the middle of summer. In one of my borders, I use a system of 6mm mild steel rods which rust beautifully (yes, they are a hazard, but what’s life without a little bit of risk while weeding the beds?) and weave a layer of string every 15-20cm up the rod. Plants then grow up through the strings.

Protect new-rising shoots from slugs and snails. Is anyone out in the dark picking them off by hand in torchlight? Not me, I chuck a few handfuls of grit around the plants I most want to save (usually my delphiniums and hostas) and leave everything else to fend for itself.

Divide clumps of perennials that are too large or those that spread outwards leaving a less productive centre. A couple of hostas are congested in their pots, so I tip them out, take a sharp spade and just slice through their tough roots to make plants the size of a side plate and replant. If the roots are fleshy and looser, you can probably prise them apart by hand. I’ve got wild primrose (Primula vulgaris) scattered throughout the garden and large clumps can be divided and replanted where they will continue to spread and push their soft yellow flowers up each spring.

Top-dress your pots by scraping out the top 2-3 inches of old compost and replace with fresh to revitalise with nutrients and fork it in with a handful of slow-release fertiliser too.

As you feed your containers, you can also feed trees, shrubs and hedges with a balanced fertiliser: scatter it over the root area and hoe or fork it into the soil. It’s particularly good for young, weak, damaged or heavily pruned plants, giving them a strengthening boost as we go into the season. Roses should be given a granular rose fertiliser now too: give shrub roses a prune as you do by taking off about a third. Hybrid teas can go back even further to about 4-6 buds from the base. Mulch with some well-rotted manure or compost but keep this away from the stems. Your roses will reward you for the trouble with fantastic flowers this summer.

Finally, I’m told a tidy lawn sets everything else off better and, while I hate lawncare, if the weather is dry enough, I’ll give the grass its first cut this month with the blades raised high. There are a few gaps that need reseeding and, as the seed needs moisture and temperatures of at least 7-8 degrees Celsius, spring is a good time to sow as doubtless there will still be plenty of rain. Rake off any leaves and scarify so seeds will make contact with the soil. Ideally sow after the lawn is good and wet after rainfall. Of course, all this activity means the weeds will be growing just as fast as the things you actually want in the garden, so don’t lose track of that hoe. Enjoy!

With spring on the horizon, now is the chance to put the final touches on preparing the garden for the coming year.

I have three rhubarb plants and early this month I force one of them. Just cover the plant with a tall bucket, dustbin or forcer so light is blocked out and leave it for eight weeks or so before harvesting the tender pale stalks. I rotate the chosen plant each year so that the others can recover for a couple of years afterwards.

Another job is to prune late-summer flowering, Group 3 clematis. If you don’t know much about clematis pruning or keep losing the labels as I do, the groups are based on when the plant flowers and the age of the flowering wood.

In Group 1 are early-blooming clematis that flower on shoots produced the previous season and need no regular pruning. You might need to train and thin them every few years, but mainly just deadhead. Group 2 clematis have large flowers between May and June on shoots developed from the previous year’s growth. Prune after the first flush of flowers in early summer, back to a large growth bud immediately below and you may get more flowers in late summer.

Finally, there are plants in pruning Group 3; in my garden a yellow Clematis tangutica ‘Lambton Park’, blue bell-shaped Clematis ‘Rooguchi’ and red-purple ‘Sweet Summer Love’ on tripods or scrambling through roses in the borders. I’ve seen nodding pink ‘Alionushka’ paired with mid-blue ‘Hendersonii’ in another garden: both can be treated the same. All flower from mid- to late summer on the last two feet or so of the current year’s growth and, if left unpruned, you just get a mass of tangled flowers over your head with bare stems everywhere else. So, I prune back hard this month to the lowest pair of buds, usually about 30cm from the base, then tie them in ready for the rapid growth they’ll put on soon.

If you’ve lost all your labels and can remember what flowered when last year (if you can’t, it’s a good excuse to take lots of photos on your garden this year), then there’s a rhyme to help you remember which clematis to prune: if it flowers before June, don’t prune.

By now my clumps of Sedum ‘Herbstfreude’ (now called Hylotelephium but I can’t pronounce that let alone remember it) which I left for the birds and eye-catching frostiness, need cutting back. You should see the new buds coming through from the base already and, as the weather warms up, they are unlikely to need protecting.

Larger clumps of snowdrops (Galanthus) can be lifted and divided once they have finished flowering and still ‘in the green’. Make sure the leaves remain attached to the bulb when you replant and they’ll have a better chance of establishing than planting bulbs alone.

I have 1.8-metre-tall clumps of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Ferner Osten’ and ‘Malepartus’ giving winter structure and making a link through the garden. Late in the month (and during March) is the best time to cut back to ground level these and other deciduous grasses before growth begins. Just rake gloved fingers or a handfork through evergreen grasses to remove dead material.

All this (and plenty of other jobs) will help get the garden back into some order before new growth begins in earnest.

I love this time of year. The wet and sogginess of late autumn are behind us, there’s Christmas to look forward to, and dry chilly days with winter sunshine to brighten the mood. Once the winter solstice has passed, the days start getting longer again, and it won’t be long until we can get planting for a whole new season. Right now, it’s pretty much ‘more of the same’ in the garden: tidy and prepare the way for the year to come.

You can take hardwood cuttings this side of Christmas. I took some from roses last year and, while I lost some (hybrid teas don’t respond well), others have come on well over the year but still don’t need potting on yet. I’m going to try it with Deutzia Ruby Red that’s a good doer in a slightly shady corner and a pink flowering currant (Ribes), but Buddleja, Philadelphus (mock orange), climbers like honeysuckle (Lonicera) and Jasmine (Jasminum), fruit like gooseberries, figs and black, red and white currants are also options.

Cut sections of vigorous shoots that have grown this year into 15-30cm pieces. Make a sloping cut above a bud at the top so water doesn’t collect and damage the cutting, but also as a reminder which end is the top. Make a flat cut at the base below a bud and dip it in hormone rooting powder. Don’t bother planting the soft tip, it won’t make it through winter.

You can either insert the cuttings into a trench in an unneeded and well-drained bed in a sheltered spot or use some deep pots. Push two-thirds of the cutting below soil level and leave them undisturbed until the following autumn at least, checking to see they don’t dry out over summer.

I’ll winter prune my two wisterias now to keep them in check where they spread over my shed. Remember taking those long whippy shoots back to 7 buds in summer? Now cut it back again to two or three buds. I’ve got a couple of grape vines too and their sideshoots can be cut back to two buds of the main stem, which can encourage fruiting spurs. Doing it now when the sap isn’t rising means there’s less chance that the plant will bleed.

In the new year, divide your existing snowdrops while they are in the green to help them establish better. I’ve got three rhubarb plants so I usually force one of them in January (rotating which plant I do it to so that the others can recover for a couple of years afterwards). Just cover the plant with a tall bucket, dustbin or forcer so light is blocked out and leave it for eight weeks or so before harvesting the tender pale stalks.

I’ve put up a sturdy new hanging bird table in a small tree near the window where I can look out onto the garden from my home office. Working at home means I get to see the little wren that hops about in my winter honeysuckle. A bit of food will hopefully attract its friends too: giving me an entertaining distraction and helping them through winter. (Let’s hope the reality isn’t flocks of seagulls and pigeons divebombing my windows.) I’ve a great wall of honeysuckle, ivy, oak-leaved hydrangea and a yew tree that makes a great nesting site but need to give it a trim to keep it tidy. Best to do it now before birds start nesting.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

On 5 December, around 40 members and guests of the Society enjoyed a most interesting and informative talk from Linda and Neil Holdaway about the National Gardens Scheme, giving us some lovely ideas for gardens for us to visit in Essex.

This was followed by wine and mince pies to celebrate the festive season and a special raffle.

As promised, we drew the winner from all those who had taken part in our recent survey. Congratulations Anne Rowledge, who wins the garden gift voucher, and thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute your views.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!