1. Weeding!! Seem to have spent most of the past week weeding as with the warmer weather those pesky weeds are now emerging. It’s a pain but necessary to keep on top of them…
2. Now is the time to feed roses with a bespoke rose fertiliser or with an organic feed such as blood, fish and bone.
3. Trim lavender if you didn’t get round to it last autumn. I take the shears to mine chopping off all the old flower stems and taking the new growth down by about 3 cm.
4. If you lifted and overwintered your dahlias then pot them up and put them somewhere sunny – an unheated greenhouse is perfect – so they can start shooting up ready to harden off and plant out at the end of May when all threats of frost have passed.
5. Continue dividing perennials such as geraniums and penstemons.
6. Sow sweet peas in an unheated greenhouse.
7. Deadhead daffodils and tulips.
8. Renovate overgrown or untidy evergreen shrubs such as Photinia, Laurel and Choisya, although with the latter wait until it has flowered.
9. Thin out Crocosmia if they have spread into vast clumps. Dig them up carefully, separate into smaller clumps and then re-plant.