Autumn Gardening Tips

Secret Gardens Autumn Gardening Tips

Roger our expert Horticulturist gives you his autumn gardening tips for keeping your garden healthy and preparing it for the months ahead. If you have any questions on your garden send them to us and we will get Roger to answer them for you.

1. Aerate your lawn and lightly feed it to strengthen for winter. Check for lawn grub, we are seeing a lot of cases of this at the moment.
2. Cutback summer flowering perennials.
3. It’s the perfect time to transplant and move shrubs and plants to a new home while the weather is cool. Always apply Seasol for a speedy recovery.
4. Plant winter greens, such as Cabbage, Broccoli , Coriander and Beetroot. Plant a grafted passionfruit so its established and ready to fruit in summer.
5. Weed, weed, weed. Many summer weeds will set seed now so remove them quickly before the seeds reach the ground and you will have less weeding to do in Spring.
6. Disentangle climbers and cut back leggy summer growth on established plants or train onto wires/frames for young plants. Don’t cut into hardwood as you may reduce flowering in spring.
7. Dead head (remove old flowers and seed heads) your Roses to prolong flowering before winter pruning.
8. Remove fallen leaves from lawns and garden beds and compost, add a sprinkling of manure pellets between layers to speed up the process.
9. Winter flowering annuals such as Pansies, Primula, Cinerarias, or try the hardy native Rhodanthe ‘Paper Daisy’, all provide much needed winter colour but need to be planted now to maximise flowering time.