Tom Strowlger
@garden_with_tom
February is the last month of meteorological winter and brings us sure signs that spring is around the corner, with daylight hours increasing and wildlife awakening from winter’s slumber. In the garden we will see a wide range of spring bulbs coming through the topsoil of our beds, borders and pots. The snowdrops and crocuses are already flowering whilst daffodils, hyacinth, muscari, alliums and tulips hold out for the milder days of springtime.
February gives us gardeners the opportunity to get ready for spring by giving our evergreen shrubs a prune before the growing season arrives. During milder spells of weather, we can plant newly bought shrubs, trees and bare root roses into the ground. The weather in February can range widely from frosts and snow to milder sunny days so us gardeners will need to keep an eye on the weather forecast.
This is a month where we can get ahead of mother nature; we can start sowing the seeds of our favourite flowers in indoor propagators and seed trays. The seeds will require the warmth and light of a greenhouse or indoor room for the germination process to be successful. We can sow and grow cosmos, cornflower, nigella, rudbeckia, sweet pea, salvia and zinnia to name but a few in readiness for planting out the seedlings in springtime.
There is still time to create a new border in your garden or build a raised bed, either would give you extra space to grow and enjoy even more plants and flowers. A border can be dug out directly into the ground or a raised bed built by placing railway sleepers into an interlocking square and filling it with a bottom layer of soil and top layer of compost.
We can spend a few days planting out our late spring and summer bulbs, tubers and corms into our new and existing raised beds, borders and pots. The allium globemaster, anemones, lilies, begonia, crocosmia and dahlia flowers will make the garden come alive in the heady days of summer.
The pots and containers in the garden will have taken a bit of a battering over winter so we need to get them ready for springtime by giving them a good clean. Also checking they have adequate drainage holes and adding pieces of a broken terracotta pot into the base of each container to improve the soak away process.
So let’s enjoy the last month of winter beauty with a skip in our gardening step as it won’t be long before we can spend more time in the garden. Let us get our gardening gloves on and get cracking into the last of the winter jobs whilst we daydream about daffodil season and springtime.
Please do follow me on Instagram @garden_with_tom for more seasonal gardening advice and tips.
This month’s top tips:
Cut back perennials ready for the new growing season
Put up a nest box
Clean your lawnmower
Keep feeding the birds
Keep off a frosty lawn, footsteps can snap and kill the frozen grass
