Tasks for October

It's autumn clear-up time and your chance to put your garden to bed so it can slowly subside into its winter slumber. After the full-on party-time of summer, it's a chance to have a good sweep through, pick up all the rubbish and evict any unwanted pests before they make themselves too comfortable. Prepare your garden well for winter and [...]

Plant lilies in containers and you'll be able to enjoy their magnificent display up close next summer, including that heady, intoxicating perfume. Growing these spectacular flowers in pots is a great technique for making the most of their many fine qualities: drop them, pot and all, into gaps in the border just as they're about to flower, or move them [...]

Plant spring bedding to get next year's display under way. There are lots of bare-root plants and plugs on the garden centre shelves right now, and since they're all hardy and can overwinter where you plant them it's a really economical way of making sure your garden is packed with colour early in the year. Here are some of the [...]

Plant for autumn colour to keep your garden looking gorgeous well into the first frosts. It's a great time of year to get new shrubs and trees into the ground and there's a fantastic range in our garden centre, all brilliantly colourful at this time of year. Here are a few of our favourites: Toffee apple tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) adds [...]

Time to put the veg garden to bed after a fantastic year, with enough summer sunshine to coax fruit into a frenzy and filling basket after basket of beans, fat pea pods and elegant courgettes. As the summer harvest slows, though, it's time to get the veg garden ready for its winter rest so it's in perfect shape for doing [...]

Plant your bulbs this month as autumn is the key time for getting daffodils, crocuses, winter aconites, muscari, hyacinths and of course tulips into the ground. Choose from the rainbow of varieties now available in our garden centre, then follow our ten golden rules so they're raring to go next spring. Get the timing right – plant most bulbs now, [...]