The height of summer is ahead and although there’s still plenty to do, don’t forget to make time to enjoy the fruits of your labours with a cool G&T (or tea or fizzy water) in the sun. For me, that means seeing lilies and balls of blue agapanthus that have taken over from spires of delphiniums, while clematis and dahlias are showing variety of colour and form in every bed and border.

As some roses start going over, we probably all know how important deadheading is to keep them going, but you can sometimes encourage a second flush of flowers on delphinium, foxgloves, lupins and verbascum by deadheading them too. Wait until the initial spike has stopped flowering, then remove it and let any sideshoots take over. This works for hardy geraniums too once the foliage starts looking a bit tatty. Just cut them back to ground level for a second flush of leaves and – if you’re lucky – a few more flowers.

If you’re growing dahlias, then get the best of them with plenty of nourishment: liquid feed and plenty of water. I gave up watering in the heat of last summer and most of my dahlias did very poorly as a result.

Feeding can be key to get the best from many plants (especially if you’re thinking of exhibiting). Nitrogen-rich feed is typically given earlier in the season before buds burst or fruit starts to form, as it encourages greenery, in other words strong stems and foliage. Feed too much of it or too late in the season and you’ll get plenty of greenery at the expense of flowers.

For flowers and fruit, you need a potassium-rich (sometimes also called high-potash) fertiliser, which is great for dahlias, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, tomatoes and, if you’re going to give them a go, cucumbers and melons.

Speaking of tomatoes, don’t forget to pinch out the side-shoots if you’re growing cordon (also called indeterminate or vine) varieties and tie in the leading stem until the fifth or sixth truss of flowers has set fruit, then cut it off. Remove yellowing lower leaves as the summer progresses to improve air circulation.

Cucumbers also need pinching out – two leaves beyond any developing fruit – and remove old cucumbers to encourage more flowering. Train them up a wigwam of canes rather than letting them trail on the ground like courgettes and bury a small plant pot into the soil and water into it. This will help water reach the roots but stop you soaking the stems which can cause them to rot.

Like dahlias, keep camellias and rhododendrons well-watered over the next couple of months but especially in August when they are forming their flower buds for next spring’s display. If yours didn’t flower well this year, it’s most likely due to drought during the blazing hot weather in ‘22.

Finally, I’m going to try taking clematis cuttings after we were donated a couple of beautiful home-grown plants at our Plant Sale this year. If you want to try your hand at it, July is a good time to cut off a long piece of this year’s growth (ideally non-flowering) and create sections about 8-10cms, each with a pair of leaves (you might see tiny buds nestled between leaf and stem). Trim each cutting immediately above the pair of leaves and about 3-5cm below. Insert the stem into the compost so the point where the leaves meet the stem rests on the soil surface. Keep the cuttings moist and in humid conditions (a propagator or plastic bag is ideal) and once successfully rooted, you’ll see the buds grow to form a new plant.

The longest day of the year is always a bittersweet point in my year as, although it means the height of summer is just around the corner, it also means the days are getting shorter again. But that’s glass-half-empty thinking and there’s too much going on to dwell on it.

The garden is already looking glorious with deep pink alstroemeria and shrubby Salvia microphylla ‘Cerro Potosi’ contrasting with deep blue, purple and ultramarine delphiniums towering to six feet. Roses are peaking in every bed and border, there are spikes of richly coloured iris backed by the white racemes of wisteria, plus lilies and lupins, and alliums taking over from the last of the tulips.

I’ve been exceptionally pleased with the display of tulips I planted late last autumn – delicate shades of pink, peach and apricot contrasted the blue Camassia leichtlinii and have been utterly glorious. But they’re done now, and I’ve cut back the stems so the leaves blend better among the rest of the planting while they slowly die back. Once the foliage has yellowed, I can safely cut them back to ground level.

With so much abandon in the borders, plants can quickly collapse – as like as not the minute you turn your back on them – so make sure your stakes are in place. Tall plants like delphiniums, those with large flowers (poppies and peonies) and those with both (hello, dahlias) will almost always require additional support. If you haven’t done this in April or May when everything is supposed to grow through tidily, it’s time for some emergency staking.

This can be more difficult as plants are bigger and taller, so inserting stakes and tying stems in can lead to damage and the whole flipping thing snapping clean off. If it happens, just tidy it up with some sharp secateurs, pretend it didn’t happen and move on. Match the strength of the stake or other support to the plant you want to restrain, but don’t tie them in too firmly – let them move gently with the wind.

After months of planting and nurturing seeds in the greenhouse and the danger of frost well past, my less-hardy plants – cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, zinnia and dahlia – can now be planted out. Of course, the particularly paranoid would never say never with the British weather so keep some fleece handy in case temperatures drop in the early days of the month.

If you have box hedging, now’s a good time to trim it (sorry but if it needs a harder cut back, then you really should have done it last month). Prune when you’re sure of a few dry days so the cut ends have chance to callus over and reduce the risk that box blight fungus, brought by wetter weather, will penetrate and damage your plants.

While I can whizz over the box with a hedge-cutter or hand shears, it takes a more delicate touch on the chrysanthemums I’m trying to grow for show. For exhibition flowers, I need one spectacular flower so will ‘disbud’ to keep the main central flower bud but remove all the side buds and shoots. In contrast, I want bushier plants with plenty of flowers in my borders so will pinch out the leaders on these varieties to encourage more side shoots.

The ‘June drop’ reminds me to give some attention to fruit trees and bushes this month. The drop will take care of some fruit but, for the healthiest fruit and better-quality crop, it’s worth thinning plums, pears and apples by hand. With fewer fruits, there’s less demand on limited nutrients and everything should ripen well. You can find recommended spacing between fruit online: for instance, it’s 10-15cm between pears and dessert apples. I can also thin gooseberries while they’re still unripe, removing every other fruit so that what remains can swell to a good size and sweeten in the sunshine before harvesting them in July.

With summer’s arrival, I can also prune stone fruit – cherries, plums, greengages, peaches and nectarines – without the risk of silverleaf.

As ever, there’s plenty to do so bust out the tools (sorry) and get in the garden.

There’s plenty to celebrate this May with three bank holidays and all kinds of things making the garden looking amazing.

Here, the rhododendron is budding, aubrieta, aquilegia and alliums are in full bloom along with early iris and roses, while clematis and wisteria are climbing their way over fences and the shed. I’m very jealous of my sister’s tree peony at this time of year – it’s a magnificent thing, nearly as tall as me (5 foot 10 if you’re wondering) and covered with huge deep pink flowers. Of course, she gardens on clay which does wonders for peonies and roses.

But you can’t spend three bank holidays stood around admiring, these long weekends give you plenty of time to get into the borders and get stuff done.

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by all the flowers that are out right now; there’s still the potential for a late frost or two so keep some fleece about and protect your more tender veg plants – like cucumbers, sweetcorn or chillies – under cover for a little longer. The risk of frost should have passed by the end of the month when tender plants can be hardened off and planted out.

I tried lifting some of my dahlias last October but didn’t manage to get them buried in old compost to protect them in time, so lost the lot to the first serious frost of December. I still left plenty in the ground though and these should have made it through OK. If you lifted yours, you may have started them off already and have fairly good-sized plants to get in the ground by the end of the month, but any you left in the ground will soon catch up. I also planted cosmos seeds in April, pinching out the tops of seedlings to make them bushier, and they’ll be big enough to go in the ground this month too.

Don’t forget to harden off anything you’ve been growing under cover for a couple of weeks. Just put them outside during the day and back under cover as the temperatures drop overnight, then bring them out again in the warmer morning. A couple of weeks of this will stop them going into shock when they’re planted out.

If you grow apples, plums and greengages, get some pheromone traps up to monitor for codling and plum fruit moths and reduce the risk of maggots in your fruit (gross). The sticky trap lets you detect male moths as they look for mates from mid-May until the end of July. While the traps will prevent some male moths from mating (and it’s the female’s eggs that become maggots and damage your fruit), they usually indicate it’s time to get some insecticide on your trees. I don’t really like to use insecticides though, so just let the traps reduce the risk and live with some fruit that I can’t eat.

Speaking of gross wriggly things. Don’t forget to also check any gooseberry plants for sawfly larvae, voracious little caterpillars that will shred your bushes in a matter of days. They don’t damage fruit but can set the plant back and affect fruiting the following year. You can use nematodes to control them very effectively if you prefer not to use insecticides.

While plenty is growing, there’s stuff to prune too in May. Once flowered, your deutzia, flowering current, forsythia, mock orange or bridal wreath (Spiraea ‘Arguta’) should be cut back to keep their size under control and encourage fresh growth over summer which will carry more flowers next year.

I’ll also cut back the Clematis montana, planted on the front of my house with climbing roses Claire Austin and Paul‘s Himalayan Musk, but which now only flowers occasionally and only at the very top.

To refresh it, I’ll hard prune the clematis this spring after it’s flowered. Montana usually responds well and should give me better flowers lower down the plant next season. While I’m at it, I’ll tie the Himalayan Musk as near to horizontal as possible. The restricted flow of sap will encourage more side-shoots along the length of stem and so more flowers on this plant too. Hurrah!

Although it’s our last speaker evening on 3 May, there’s still plenty of gardening events to look forward to in Dedham this summer. Come along to our plant sale in front of the church, member coffee morning (join up and join us!) or annual coach trip – this year we’re off to Great Comp in Kent.

Well, what a March it’s been. One of the jobs for April was going to be “protect fruit blossom from late frosts” but frankly I’ll be amazed if March’s weather hasn’t put an end to any early spring blossom and – as a result – the potential for fruit to come. Luckily, one thing I can enjoy this month are the tender pink stems of my forced rhubarb; yum.

1 March may mark the start of meteorological spring, but you and I know that the season doesn’t really get going until this month when the clocks have changed, the days are noticeably longer and the ground is warming up. April also means tulip-time (it’s a proper thing, honest) and – as much as I’ve being enjoying the colour-pops of yellow daffs through March – I love the rich range of colour that tulips bring more.

But on to the work.

I’ve never had much luck with hydrangeas, even though their earlier name, Hortensia, suggests to me that any home is much the poorer without one. And they’re certainly spectacular.

If you’re not familiar, there are several kinds and early April is a good time to prune the lacecap and mophead cultivars of Hydrangea Macrophylla.

Macrophylla flower on the previous year’s growth and it’s best to leave cutting back until this point in the year. As well as looking nice when frosted over winter, leaving the old flowers until spring will help protect stems and new buds. This month though, you can carefully cut off the old flowerheads just above a pair of buds. You can also remove any weak stems, and maybe a couple of the very oldest, to make room for new growth from the base.

This is also a good month to direct sow the seeds of hardy annuals like sunflowers, nigella and nasturtiums, calendula, Californian poppies and cornflowers. It’s probably a good job that they’re hardy in case April or May brings more cold weather. We all know it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

Just sow seeds straight into the ground on a dry day. Rake your soil to a fine texture first which will help the seedlings break through and reach the light. Make sure you remove weeds as they usually grow faster and will compete with the plants you actually want. If you sow in straight lines – while it won’t look very natural – it will be easy to see anything that grows outside the lines and is therefore likely a weed seedling. Water the seeds in well with a fine rose on your watering can, so you don’t wash the seeds all over the place.

Elsewhere in the garden, look for fresh new buds on slightly tender plants like penstemons and lavender. Ideally the buds will be as low down on the plant as possible to keep the plants from getting straggly. The advice now seems to be to prune these plants in spring instead of autumn, once the weather and temperatures have improved. I still trim the flower stalks back in August but save the reshaping prune until now. You can treat sage and rosemary the same.

Our plant sale is on Saturday morning, 13 May, outside Dedham church (mark the date in your diary now!) and we always welcome any spare plants you don’t need. Now is a great time to make new plants (for you or us) by dividing perennials like lemon balm and chives, hostas, asters and daylilies. You might need a sharp knife, two forks, a sharp spade or saw to do it (this is often not delicate work), but just make sure that each division has roots and shoots. Dividing plants also refreshes older plants, helping them grow away more strongly.

Finally, we can still mulch beds and borders now and it will help keep in the moisture from wet March. This could be especially important around rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias which will suffer bud drop if they get too dry over summer. My camellias have definitely been affected by last year’s hot, dry weather as flowering isn’t anything like as spectacular as normal. I’ll make sure to use an ericaceous feed on these plants, as well as on the blueberries I grow in pots to give everything a boost this year.

With spring definitely well underway now, I hope you’re looking forward to extra time in the garden.

On Saturday 1 April (yes, that day), Dedham’s Horticultural Society brings its Spring Show back to the village’s Assembly Rooms.

There are five areas in which we encourage you to exhibit and, like the autumn show, a range of classes – so it’s a perfect chance to show off some of your spring plants. It’s free to enter, a lot of fun and a great way to get to know some of your fellow growers, cooks, arrangers and photographers. Even if you think you don’t have a green thumb (try anyway, you might be surprised!), there are other options.

Spring is our daffodil show – just as it’s dahlias in autumn – but while there a couple of dahlias classes I’d recommend to anyone new to showing, there are many more daffodil classes you can enter and you only need one or three of a kind. Perfect if you have a limited number of plants from your garden, containers or window boxes.

The key to entering is knowing what kind of daffodil you have as the wrong daff in a class will be judged NAS ‘not as standard’ and disqualified. Yikes! We post examples of how daffodils are formally classified on our website and you can find the classification system on the website of the UK’s Daffodil Society too.

The trumpet daffodil, for classes 1-6, is the one we’re all most familiar with. You can check whether you have one by gently folding the petals forward over the long trumpet (sometimes called a cup). If they are shorter than the trumpet, then congrats you have a trumpet daffodil. Choose one of the classes based on colour and whether you have enough identical-looking flowers.

Tulips are another good cut flower to enter, though class 17 – three stems in a vase, one variety – is, I think, harder than the other two as each flower needs to look identical. The others just need you to plonk one or five of any tulip into a vase.With miniature or small bulbous plants (class 20), tulips and most daffodils are excluded by their size, but you can include miniature daffs like ‘Tête-à-tête’, Iris reticulata, snowdrops, crocus (if they haven’t gone over already), Chionodoxa luciliae, the snake’s head fritillary, grape hyacinth (Muscari) and Scilla siberica.

Apparently, dahlias grown from new cuttings make better exhibition-quality plants than those grown from older tubers. So if you’re getting serious about our autumn show, you can start making cuttings from any tubers you lifted and stored ahead of winter. Take them out of storage and pot them up in multi-purpose compost with the old stalk just above the surface. Give them a bit of water and put them on a warm, light windowsill or in a propagator. Once the resulting shoots are about 8cm long, use a sharp knife to carefully cut them free. Dip them in hormone powder and push them gently into a pot of compost and use a propagator or plastic bag to encourage rooting.

If spending March planning for the show doesn’t float your boat, then I expect you’ll want some work to do in the garden instead. I’ll ease you in gently with a bit of cutting back of some ornamental grasses.

Take deciduous Calamagrostis and Deschampsia back to ground level before growth starts. You can do similar with pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana), just watch out for new growth and protect yourself from the sharp edges of their leaves. Tackle Miscanthus towards the end of March or in April, pruning individual stems so you don’t accidentally cut off new green shoots. Pennisetum should be done in late April as the old stems protect the crown if spring is a wet one.

Whether you’re cutting back pampas or planning to show, it’s time to enjoy the garden as spring arrives.

Happy new year everyone. I hope you’re rested up because now we’re entering February, the weather is hopefully better and there’s plenty to be done to get ready for the year to come.

As you work, don’t forget to enjoy the crocuses, iris reticulata and maybe some daffodils emerging. There will be snowdrops and cyclamen, hellebores and primroses, camellia and winter-flowering honeysuckle as well as the catkins of pussy willow and Garrya elliptica, the silk tassel bush.

But don’t spend too much time admiring, there’s plenty to do including the last chance to finish pruning wisteria. I’ll cut back the whippy shoots, already trimmed over the summer, even further to two or three buds. I also want to try and take the plant over an arch, so this summer will try to train some of the whippy shoots where I want them.

Plant lilies this month: I’ve huge, scented skyscraper (Oriental x Trumpet) lilies in the centre of one bed and martagons in shadier areas. If your soil is heavier, plant them in pots – five in a 10-inch container – and be prepared to stake the taller varieties. Bear in mind that lilies are very toxic to cats though – so if you have them and they like a nibble on your plants, best choose something else.

There’s also plenty I need to do with fruit in the garden and down on the allotment.

I’ll take secateurs to my gooseberry bushes (no doubt shredding my hands on merciless thorns as I do) to cut back sideshoots to two or three buds. I’ll need to take more stems out of the centre of the plant to create a goblet shape and open up the centre. It will improve airflow to reduce mildew and can have the added bonus of allowing birds in to snack on pests. Gooseberry sawfly are the biggest fear and a couple of years ago their caterpillars decimated the leaves of my plants. They don’t go for fruit but left unchecked can stunt the plant’s growth, so it’s always good to know that a man with a drencher of nematodes – and his mate, the brighter-plumed female Slumper – will be active later in the year as the weather warms up.

I’ll drop forcers over a couple of rhubarb crops this month to encourage bright pink, tender shoots that are ready to harvest earlier than the usual crop. Anything that cuts out the light – like a bucket – will do but avoid clumps that you forced last year as they’ll appreciate the chance to recover.

Before you leave the borders, get some mulch on any bare soil. There’s just time this month to do it although try to avoid places where you have dwarf bulbs coming through – your tulips and daffs won’t mind at all. I usually have a good bin of compost ready to go by this time of year, which lets me turn the other two bins once it’s empty and sets me up for the new season. The mulch will keep in all that lovely moisture from January and December, as well as keep down annual weeds and improve your soil structure as worms take it down. Just spread it good and thick – 2-3 inches – but if you have a heavier soil, it’s best to leave this until March when the soil has had more time to warm up.

Finally, if you’re still trying to work off any seasonal excesses, don’t forget that gardening – especially the hard work of digging, hand weeding and raking – is good for you. But you don’t need that added encouragement do you. Do you?

It’s been a surprisingly and unseasonably warm autumn to the point I’m writing this but hopefully by now the temperature has dropped and a bit of chill has settled in. So I expect you’re wondering what you can do to keep you warm outside. No?

If you still haven’t planted your tulip bulbs, there’s still time in December and even January to get them into the ground or in containers as bulb lasagnes. I love tulips and the range of colours and forms but I’m afraid I may have gone a bit nuts this year (who am I kidding, this is really no different from any other year) with the number ordered. There will be a range of pinks for the cottage border and shades of deep red and purple for deeper into the garden.

It’s not just tulips either. I’m already looking at dahlias and as hellebores start to flower, I wonder if there isn’t a new cultivar I have to have (there is but I don’t need to have it). What I should do is remove any hellebore foliage marked with black blotches to limit the spread of disease and make the plants I have as healthy as they can be. Specialist nurseries recommend cutting off all the foliage, diseased or not, to help stop the new season’s growth becoming infected. This has the added advantage of ensuring the flowers can be seen to their best.

With the leaves off deciduous shrubs and trees, now is the perfect time to look at the structure of the garden and work out whether anything can be cut back or pruned for better shape. This sounds great in theory but in reality, I think a cloud-pruned something-or-other is going to look a bit odd in the general rough and tumble of my borders. Instead, I’ll settle for tackling anything too high, too wide or too crowded with loppers, secateurs and shears.

It’s a good excuse to get into the front garden and control the 20 or so roses threatening to attack the postman. I’ll also prune my climbing Claire Austin rose; a sturdy shrub shrouding the front of the house, which needs managing so she’s not pushing her way into the neighbour’s house. I’ll remove diseased and damaged growth, tying in where needed and cutting back older side shoots that have already flowered by about two-thirds of their length.

Take the chance to clip box hedging now too as box blight is dormant in winter. The cuts you make will have healed by spring when the spores of this fungal disease are airborne, so the chance of an attack will be reduced. Make sure you rake up and burn any leaves under the box as blight can over-winter there.

On the allotment, I’ll finally get round to cutting down the woody stems of asparagus foliage that has turned brown and no longer feeds the plant. I have some gaps in the beds, so will order fresh male crowns to plant in spring.

I’ll lift and divide some of my established rhubarb plants, discarding the centre to reinvigorate them. In January, I’ll chuck a special forcer or a bucket over a strong clump or two to force an early and tender crop of bright pink stems. Don’t try this on the newly planted divisions as forcing puts strain on the plants that might kill them.

Sticky grease around the trunks of my fruit trees will stop wingless female moths climbing to lay their eggs in the branches. When hatched, the maggots enter the fruits to feast and await unwary pickers come harvest time. Grim.

Finally, Christmas brings a great opportunity to start composting. The outer wrappers of Quality Street are made from cellulose, so you can chuck them on your heap instead of in the bin! What a perfect excuse to buy a tin (or two).

I hope you’ll find time to pick up a carefully chosen tree (see gratuitous tree picture) and enjoy a mince pie and hot mulled wine while you decorate and wrap the presents. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone from the Dedham Horticultural Society committee.

As I write this in October, it’s been a lovely (possibly unseasonably) sunny weekend, which came with a serious amount of hedge-cutting, time on the allotment and – following my own advice from last month – mowing the lawn. I’m exhausted… but not too exhausted to make some suggestions for how you might like to spend any time you can get in the garden this month. In fact, November is a good, final chance to trim evergreen hedging before any bad winter weather.

Although this is by far the worst month of the year with cold, wet slippery leaves, rain and dark long nights, November has one advantage in also being the start of the bare-root season. It means trees and shrubs are dormant and often cheaper to buy, so if you don’t have a hedge to cut then now is the time to plant one for five years down the line! If you do buy bare-root, try to plant them promptly. If the weather isn’t ideal or you don’t have a permanent space prepared when they arrive, then you can leave them in the bag in a cool place for a bit or heel them into a spare patch of soil.

When you are ready to plant out, soak the bare-root in a bucket of water for 30 minutes or so to rehydrate. Make sure the hole is big enough to let you spread out the plant’s roots and that the soil is nice and loose – you want to do all you can to help the roots find water as the soil warms up in spring. Firm the bare-root in well and water, even if the soil (or weather) is wet. Mulch to keep the moisture in and reduce weeds.

If you’re not planting, it’s probably because – like me – you have no room in the garden for anything else. So spend your time now cutting back in the border, unless you’re leaving stems for structure or over-wintering wildlife. I like the look of sedum Hylotelephium ‘Herbstfreude’ when it’s frosted in the morning and it’s sturdy enough not to turn to mush for most of winter. Leaving its stems also protects new growth at the base. As I move around cutting back, I’ll also remove stakes and supports and the string that holds some of my more unruly plants back.

While you’re cutting back, give your bush roses a light prune; it will reduce their height and prevent them rocking themselves loose of the soil in high winds. You could try using the prunings to make hardwood cuttings, a technique that’s also suitable for shrubs like cornus, hydrangea, salix and forsythia, as well as climbers honeysuckle and jasmine, and fruit from gooseberries to black, red and white currants and figs.

Choose vigorous shoots from this year’s growth and cut the tip out (it’ll only wilt) and then make 15-30cm lengths. Cut just below a bud at the bottom of each length, then dip the bottom in hormone rooting compound. Insert the cutting in a prepared trench in a spare bit of ground (make it an out of the way spot as they’ll take a while to root) or into a deep plant pot so about a third is above the surface.

Leave them until summer next year at least (probably longer) and make sure they don’t dry out – new growth indicates roots have formed and you can consider potting them on.

If hardwood doesn’t do it for you, try root cuttings between November and March while plants are dormant. Papaver (the perennial, oriental poppy), verbascum, Japanese anemones, and phlox are all good candidates. Choose young, slender roots about 5mm thick and cut into pieces: length isn’t important. Verbascums and poppies do better if you plant them vertically, while anemones and phlox work better laid horizontally on the compost’s surface. If you’re inserting them vertically, make sure the top is uppermost or they won’t grow.

Finally, I’ll get some work done on my fruit trees and bushes to maximise crops next year. I’ll apply grease to fruit tree trunks to prevent female winter months climbing up to lay their eggs and reduce the maggots that follow in the fruit. Autumn-fruiting raspberries can be cut back, I’ll take out a third of older stems of my blackcurrant bushes, and prune gooseberries by removing stems from the centre. Runners from strawberry plants will also need cutting off from their parents but I can pot them up to grow on (look out for a few in our May plant sale).

So do try to get out in the garden this month. Even though it’ll probably be wet, cold, rainy, and dark; try.

Last month, we hosted our annual Autumn Horticultural Show at the Assembly Rooms. It was great to see so many people – members and not – entering exhibits, despite the challenging weather conditions. All that dry, sunny weather is wonderful for lounging around with a cool glass of something (what do you mean you didn’t?), but after several weeks of it many of my plants were feeling very sorry for themselves.

We welcomed a few new exhibitors this year who I hope enjoyed it and discovered that ‘growing for show’ needn’t be difficult. You can easily grow something in a container if you don’t have a large garden – there are many dahlias that are made for that – or sow a range of annuals or nurture your favourite rose. We post a selection of photos on our website so you can take inspiration from past exhibitors.

Now is the time to think about planting bulbs – if you are, why not plan ahead for our Spring Show on 1 April 2023. The list of classes isn’t out for a few months yet, but there is always plenty for daffodils (narcissus), as well as opportunities to exibit your tulips, hycainths and other spring bulbs and flowers. If flowers aren’t your thing, do think about showing us your cooking, flower arranging or photography instead. It’s completely free to enter!

If you have a couple of largish containers, try making a bulb ‘lasagne’ now. You could plant layers by size of bulb with large daffodil bulbs at the bottom and smaller crocus higher up. Or plant by flowering period, so later flowering varieties at the bottom and early ones above: there’s snowdrops and crocuses in February, daffodils in March, tulips in April and alliums in May – all full of colour when not very much else has gotten going.

If you’re planting a container of bulbs in October, bear in mind that it’s usually better to plant tulips later in the year (November to early December) when the colder weather gives protection from tulip fire.

While you’re in the garden, as temperatures drop, think about lifting tender plants. I’m still deadheading many dahlias through October but as the first frost blackens the foliage, I’ve started lifting my favourites. Although my soil is quite well draining and they usually make it through winter if I leave them where they are, lifting means I can start them off earlier in spring, take cuttings to make more plants, and – if we have a summer like this one – might get them into flower sooner. I leave cannas in the ground, chucking a bit of mulch over them and hoping for the best – but they often don’t flower.

Those of you growing large banana plants or tree ferns, will no doubt be thinking about wrapping them to protect them from frost.

With some rain in September, this month is a chance to look after the lawn (hopefully now that it’s starting to green up again). Start by raking leaves off the grass – you can put them in bags to make leaf mould or just chuck them on the borders to break down into the soil. If you’re looking for a bit of a workout, use the spring-tine rake to scarify the lawn, scraping out layers of thatch and moss: it will look a mess but lets air and water get to the roots of the grass, as well as improving drainage. If it sounds too much like hard work – you can get powered scarifiers too. Raise the blades on your mower slightly and give the lawn a final cut towards the end of the month. Then finally, apply an autumn feed which builds stronger roots and helps protect over winter.

So it’s September already and the gardening season feels like it’s beginning to wind down. Sad to say this doesn’t mean we get to put our feet up.

It’s been a strange, hot and incredibly dry season with talk (as I write this) of an official drought and inevitable hosepipe bans. Let’s hope you all found enough flowers to enter this year’s Autumn Show.

Looking around the garden, I’m going to have a go at collecting seeds from some of my plants. Collecting them when they are hard, brown and completely dry, I’ll store them in a cool dry place in brown paper bags, making sure they’re labelled so I can identify them when I’m ready to sow in spring.

As well as seeds, it’s time to take softwood cuttings from fuchsias, salvias and pelargoniums and stem cuttings from some of my roses.

With salvias, select non-flowering stems and trim each below a node (where leaves join the stem) so they are 5-8cm long. Remove half the leaves from the bottom of the cutting, dip the end in hormone rooting powder and pop them round the edge of a pot of gritty compost. Water and put in a propogator or secure a plastic pag over the pot to main moisture and keep everything frost-free until the spring.

Roses are treated similarly, but hybrid teas – propogated by grafting buds onto hardier rootstocks – seem to be harder to grow from cuttings. Rose cuttings should be about 25cm long and taken from this year’s growth, just remove the soft tip and all but one leaf at the top. Rose cuttings can be left outside unprotected – in fact they can go in a trench in the border instead of in pots.

With cuttings comes cutting back. Lavender should have stopped flowering now and there are two schools of thought on pruning. Pruning this month means there is no delicate spring growth to damage, but you might not be sure if you are cutting back to a point where there won’t be regrowth. Pruning in spring lets you check for new growth and avoid cutting back too far. Either way, just keep the pruning light.

Achillea seems to be going a bit mad in the garden and on the allotment this year, so I’ll lift and pull the large clumps apart to replant so they can establish before the cooler months. I’ll do the same with Japanese anemones which are running riot in one of my beds, though they’ll stay nice and contained in shallower, less fertile soil – just another example of how plants react differently for different gardeners.

I’m a huge believer in mulching (rather than digging which is just too much hard work), so will spend most of autumn putting a good few inches of homegrown compost on as many borders as I can manage. Mulch helps the soil retain moisture, can restrict weeds and protects the roots of plants over winter.

If you grow them it’s important to keep the roots of rhododendrons and camellias well watered now (especially given the summer we’ve had) to ensure next year’s buds develop well.

As we start putting this year to bed, we can also start looking forward to spring and now is the time to order and plant spring bulbs: daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, fritillaries, camassia, alliums and more. Plant them two to three times their depth – though the deeper they are, the stonger the stems – and it will help ensure that they come back year after year.

Darwin tulips are the most reliably perennial, but wait until November to plant them to prevent tulip fire, which leads to brown spots and withered and distorted leaves. I’ve tried saving some of the tulip bulbs I grew in pots this spring and will see if they’ll come up again in the garden – if I can work out which colours they are.

You can also sow hardy annuals in preparation for next year. Marigolds (Calendula officinalis), various kinds of poppies, cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), Ammi majus and foxglove (ok, technically that one’s biennial) can all be sown now. Sowing them now – ideally where they are to flower – means they can put down roots and be ready to flower by late spring. Sow in a definite pattern so you don’t mistake them for weeds and thin them once they germinate.