How to Prepare Your Garden for Winter
The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer and the weather’s getting colder and wetter. All in all, not the ideal set of conditions for getting out in the garden.
Nevertheless, before you hang up your gardening gloves for the year, there are a few winter gardening tips that should be followed if you want your outdoor spaces to have their best chance of being ready when the weather starts to warm up again.
So let’s take a look at a few ideas on how to prepare your garden for winter.
Prune and trim trees and hedges
Get your hedges and trees into shape by cutting back any branches that are sticking out too far. It’s also a good time once the leaves have fallen to check the state of individual branches and remove any dead or diseased ones.
Tidy your beds and borders
Cut back perennials in your beds and remove any fallen leaves and dead plants to leave everything clear and ready for the fresh round of growth in the new year.
Revive your soil
Autumn is a great time for digging some fresh nutrients into your soil in the form of compost and manure. That’ll give it plenty of time to break down and allow it to do its work well in advance of the new planting season.
Protect plants that need it
Some plants are more than happy with the colder nights that winter brings, but many are not. If you have outdoor plants in pots that are likely to be damaged by frosty nights, then it’s time to get them inside. Some vulnerable plants in the ground, such as Japanese maples and palm trees, can be protected by spreading some bark around the base.
Blitz any remaining weeds
With the growing season over, weeding suddenly doesn’t seem such a neverending or thankless task – and with more rain meaning that the ground is getting softer as well, it’s not such a difficult one either. Give yourself the best chance of starting again next spring with a clean slate by digging out everything that shouldn’t be there – that softer ground should also make it easier to get more of them out by the roots.
Plant out your winter veg
The main harvesting season is over, but if homegrown veg are your thing, that doesn’t mean that the opportunity for producing your own food is done for another year. Lots of vegetables can flourish over the winter months, including most of the brassicas, lots of root veg, squashes and leeks.
Get your spring bulbs in
Nothing signals the approach of warmer weather like the sight of daffodils, crocus, tulips and other spring bulbs popping up – and once they do come out the colour they add to our gardens is a sight to behold. Get your bulbs in now and you’ll be glad you did come next spring.
Tidy up any water features
Autumn leaves get everywhere, and while raking them off the lawn is an obvious thing to do, clearing them away from your ponds and other water features isn’t. But they can easily get clogged up, so clearing those leaves out now before they start to rot should be a priority.
That’s a lot of things that might need doing! If you need some help getting your garden ready for winter, you can’t do better than getting in the team from Home View Landscapes. Our range of landscaping services means that we can get your garden looking fantastic at any time of year.
We cover the districts around Ascot, Wokingham and Maidenhead, so if you’re in any of those areas and are in need of some expert assistance with your garden, help could be just a phone call away.
Get in touch with us now to find out more.