Tasks for December

Visit winter gardens at this time of year to inspire you with beautiful ideas to take home and recreate in your own patch. Among the best is Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire, where coloured stems, delicate winter flowers and architectural silhouettes make a dazzling display. Recreate their famous black-and-white schemes at home by planting a small glade of slender white Jacquemontii [...]

The first snowfall is just around the corner if it hasn't arrived already, so prepare your plants now so they get through even the heaviest blanketing without a hitch. It's not the cold you need to worry about: in fact snow does less harm than frost. It forms a thick insulating blanket over plants and soil, holding them in a [...]

Plant bare-root fruit this month so they establish a good, healthy root system in your garden before bursting into growth next spring. You'll notice lots of bare-root plants appearing on our shelves from around now: we think they offer great value for money, as well as a really good choice of varieties. Among the bare-root bonanza you'll find raspberries sold [...]

Take care of your terracotta pots this winter and they'll last you for many, many years. We sell handsome clay planters to suit a range of styles in the garden in our garden centre, from beautifully ornate traditional vases and urns to pared-down models with clean lines and understated chic. All are frost-proof and will get through the winter without [...]

Look after your Christmas roses to keep them at their best right through the festive season. The large pure white flowers of Helleborus niger are a real tonic in the chilliest months of the year. Despite the name, they usually flower in late December to early January and make a wonderfully charming companion to the earliest bulbs such as grape [...]

Prune your blackcurrants to keep them healthy, vigorous and productive and guarantee heavy crops of those mouthwateringly plump jet-black berries next summer. If you don't have blackcurrants already in your garden, you'll find plenty of varieties to choose from on sale in our garden centre right now, from compact, reliable 'Ben Connan' to the upright, heavy-yielding 'Ben Lomond'. This month [...]