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Top tips for putting your garden to bed
As winter fast approaches, it’s time to ‘put your garden to bed’ and set it up for a fruitful spring and summer. Head Gardner Suzie Hanson has put together a few gardening tips for this time of year.
Collect fallen leaves
Here at Waddesdon our gardens team are busy collecting leaves to be used as mulch. Leaves are the perfect ingredient to add to your compost or can be used to create a beautifully crumbly leaf mould to add to your borders as a mulch.
At home you don’t need an expensive compost machine or dedicated compost area. Simply collect up the fallen leaves into a bin bag, tie the bag and create holes for air and water. Leave in your garden for a year and be rewarded with lovely mulch to be used on your beddings to help retain water and supress the weeds.
Photos: Hugh Mothersole
Tend to hellebores
These beautiful woodland plants that are perfect for home gardens as they are hardy, compact and low maintenance. What’s more, their flowers provide valuable nectar for early pollinators.
To ensure that your hellebores look their best, remove their leaves so that their flowers can be seen when they bloom this winter.
Photos: Chris Lacey
Plant your spring bulbs
Autumn and winter marks the transition from the glorious summer bedding displays to the spring displays of bedding plants and bulbs. The work you put in now will pay you back tenfold in the spring so it’s the perfect time to plant your alliums and tulips.
Photo: Mike Buffin
Photos: Chris Lacey
Protect tender plants
We will be cutting down the tender plants we have here at Waddesdon in late autumn and winter. Then, rather than lifting the plants and storing them in a frost-free place, we mulch the crowns of the plants with a thick layer of leaves to protect them.
Photo: Chris Lacey
Wrapping isn’t just for gifts
At Waddesdon we will be wrapping up our tree ferns for the winter season as it’s important to protect their crowns from frost. To do this yourself, keep the fronds on the plant and draw them together to create a pocket, then fill with straw. Then wrap the body of the tree in hessian, giving it an extra layer of protection against frost. Keep an eye out for mice nesting in the straw this winter!
Photo: Frances Porter
Prune your roses
If you have shrub roses in your garden, the frame that you should aim for is a goblet shape, open in the centre. To achieve this, it’s important to remove any stems that look dead, diseased or damaged – the three ‘Ds’ – so that your roses will be at their best next year.
Photos: Chris Lacey
Photo: Hugh Mothersole