Tasks for April

Persuade your strawberries to fruit earlier by popping a cloche or fleece over your plants, trapping every last scrap of sunshine underneath and raising the temperature by a few degrees – just enough to bring them into flower weeks ahead of schedule. Early varieties like ‘Honeoye’ work best for this, as they’re already bred to flower sooner than most types [...]

Dare to plant your new potatoes this week: as frosts look less and less likely, you can take the risk to bring forward the moment when you can harvest those mouthwatering little nuggets of sheer flavour for your tea. If you haven’t already got a tray or two chitting (forming sprouts) in eggboxes on a windowsill, it’s not too late [...]

Slugs and snails have been knocked off the no.1 worst pest spot for the first time in nearly a decade by a voracious caterpillar which arrived in the UK only five years ago but has made its mark on box hedges all over the south-east of the country. The box tree caterpillar is the larva of an Asian moth. It [...]

The results of the Big Garden Birdwatch are in and last year’s record-breaking mild winter has had a significant effect on populations of our feathery friends. The long-tailed tit has returned to the top 10 most commonly seen birds for the first time in seven years, a rise of 44% on last year, while great tits and coal tits also [...]

Japanese maples are the perfect choice of tree for any small, compact or courtyard garden. Their character and appeal makes them ideal for creating a focal point in your garden, brightening a shaded corner, or elegantly overhanging a pool or water feature. Many acers are commonly called Japanese maples, but their parents could be derived from several different species including [...]

Doctors could soon be prescribing gardening to prevent Alzheimer’s disease if scientists have their way: a study carried out in the USA has found that regular gentle exercise, such as gardening, boosts brain volume in older people and cuts the risk of dementia by 50%. The team studied 876 people over the age of 65 for five years and discovered [...]

Trim English lavender to keep it neat and also delay flowering time – ideal if you want to prolong your display of lavender right into summer. Normally English lavenders (Lavandula angustifolia), like old favourites 'Munstead' and 'Hidcote' are pruned in late August to keep it neat for winter. But a second haircut now promotes lots of new growth, filling it [...]

Fill gaps in your borders as they become obvious among newly-emerging spring growth. With the worst of winter over, it's a good time for damage assessment – inevitably you'll find some plants haven't pulled through the cold weather, either because they've succumbed to chilly wet soil (a more common cause of plant loss than cold alone), snow breakages or pest [...]