Spring: getting the garden back on its feet

There’s a morning every March when you step outside and the air smells different. The soil has warmed up a touch and the garden is quietly getting going again. It’s my busiest season, and it’s also the one where a bit of thought early on pays off right through to autumn.

Start with a walk round

Before I pick up a tool, I like to walk the whole garden with a coffee and look at it as one space rather than a list of jobs. I want to know where the eye went over winter, which borders felt thin and whether water sat on the lawn after heavy rain. Spring growth covers a lot of that up very quickly, so it’s worth making a few notes now while the bones of the garden are still on show.

Cutting back, at the right time

I leave grasses and seed heads standing through winter for the frost and the birds, so the first proper job of the year is cutting them back. Deciduous grasses such as Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ want taking down to a hand’s height in late February or early March, before the new green shoots get going. Evergreen grasses are different. Run gloved fingers through them to pull out the dead blades rather than reaching for the shears.

Perennials get the same treatment, and anything that has formed a tired, congested clump can be lifted and split now. It’s a free way to fill those thin spots you noticed on your walk.

Plants worth waiting for

By late April the borders start to fill out. One of my favourite early pairings is a deep purple salvia such as ‘Caradonna’ sending up its inky spires against a hornbeam hedge just coming into fresh, pleated leaf, with an orange geum weaving through in front. It’s a combination I come back to again and again because it flowers for months and the bees never leave it alone. Give the salvias a light trim after their first flush and they’ll come again in late summer.

Mulch, feed and hold your nerve on the frosts

Once the soil is moist and warming, a good mulch of compost or well-rotted manure, around five centimetres deep, keeps the weeds down and holds moisture into summer. Mulch a dry border and you lock the dryness in, so pick your moment after a decent spell of rain.

Here in Oxfordshire I don’t trust the frosts to be gone until the middle of May. Keep tender plants under cover until then, and have some fleece handy for anything that has pushed out early.

The lawn

Lawns wake up from March. Start mowing with the blades set high and bring them down gradually over a few weeks. A crisp edge makes the whole garden look cared for, and a spring feed in April, once the grass is growing strongly, sets it up for the summer ahead.

If you’d like a hand rethinking the garden as a whole, spring is a lovely time to talk it through.

Rob