Winter Gardening Tips

11th Jan: by admin

Firstly, on behalf of the Harrington Porter team, let me wish you all a happy new year! I hope that 2010 is a flourishing year for your garden!

Although it is the middle of Winter, now is still a good time for maintenance, especially if your garden didn’t get a thorough Autumn tidy up last year. Now is the ideal time, before Spring, for pruning and training, especially Wisteria, Roses, Clematis and fruit trees. Also, if your garden is looking quite bare and dull at this time of year – it doesn’t need to and we can change that for you! Although certainly less abundant than Spring and Summer, there are a huge range of plants that provide Winter interest throughout the season, and not just in the  form of flowers; there are ornamental stems, such as the striking red, orange or yellow stems of the ornamental Dogwoods (Cornus ssp.), or the haunting white stems of Rubus. Colour doesn’t have to be the main feature of ornamental and eye-catching stems as it does, take Corylus avenella ‘Contorta’ – the Corkscrew hazel – has a mass of twisting, gnarled stems that loop and bend in all directions, in fact this plant is at its most striking in Winter, when it has no leaves so the stems can be appreciated much more, plus it is adorned with bright yellow catkins towards the end of Winter. This is just one plant of many that really come into their own at this time of year. Contact us and we can advise on a huge range of plants to provide interest for this season, or any other, and even source the plants for you from reputable and professional suppliers to ensure the best quality.

Hopefully this recent bout of snow hasn’t been too damaging for your garden. As beautiful as snow is, it can be very destructive to tender plants, so I hope you got yours all wrapped up or sheltered before the onslaught. But, it’s not too late to protect tender plants – as long as they are still alive and not wiped out by the recent frosts, then get busy with the fleece, or drag them into a sheltered position. Not only is it the damage from frost that you should watch out for in your garden with this recent snow, but also the actual weight of the snow itself on branches and hedges can be a problem if it is left sitting there for too long. Some plants are fully hardy and will not be bothered at all by this; other plants however are hardy but they will still suffer frost-burn if left with snow on their leaves or crowns for too long. E.g. Cordylines are a good example of this, a hardly plant, but one that is quite susceptible to damage when its crown is wet and then we get regular hard frosts. When in doubt, please contact us and we can advise on particular plants and their susceptibility to frosts as well as suitable ways to protect them.

Although there’s nothing quite as fun as building a big snowman on the lawn with the children, do beware of walking on the lawn when there is snow on it, or indeed when there has been a frost and the ground is frozen. This can be very damaging to the grass which easily snaps and is damaged when frozen and then stepped on – that ‘crunchy’ sound that everyone likes to hear so much when walking on frozen lawns is actually hundreds of blades of grass snapping and breaking internally with each step. There, now, if that hasn’t guilt-tripped you into avoiding the mass slaughter of hapless grass strands then nothing will!

If you have any Winter bedding plants – i.e. in your window boxes or pots, then remember to ‘dead head’! Often people forget and this will quickly result in a plant ceasing to flower. Cyclamen, pansies, violas, primroses, all need to be dead headed before going to seed, this can keep them flowering for months as opposed to a few weeks. And, if you don’t have beautiful Winter or Spring bedding plants in your window boxes or pots – then come on and visit us! We can take care of that for you, and we pride ourselves on really eye-catching and tasteful planting schemes for such situations.

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