Gardening – March 23

Tom Strowlger

@garden_with_tom

The first month of meteorological spring is upon us, we can now breathe a pleasant sigh of relief that our gardens are finally entering the spring gardening season. The green shoots of spring are with us and wildlife will be going about its daily routine with real enthusiasm and energy. The first round of seasonal flowers is all around us; these being daffodils, crocuses, irises and hyacinths all showing off their colourful flowers.

March is a changeable weather month. It can bring sunny and warmer days but also late frosts and even snowfall. We can use any milder days to get into our gardens and crack on with some jobs. The garden in spring is a place of newness and freshness and we should use our time in the garden to dig, plant and sow, as any work put in this month will pay floral dividends in the warmer months to come. 

As the soil warms up so will roots and you will start to see the leafy shoots of perennial plants like delphinium, bergenia, hosta and lupins make their presence known. If the month is mild then our resident slugs will start their hungry work, so we need to be aware of their fondness for green shoots and protect our plants with a layer of fine sand or eggshells around the base of plants. 

If the month remains cold then it’s our last call to prune roses, cut back any overwintered fuchsias by one to two buds, snip off spent hydrangea mop-heads, grapevines (only if without opening buds) and buddleia. We can cut back old brown foliage of perennials before the green shoots become longer leaves, we don’t want to risk cutting any new growth amongst the old branches and leaves.

The lawn will need some love after the long winter, so tidying the border edges and giving some attention to any patches will make the lawn look refreshed. The existing lawn grass is now actively growing, so we can give it the first cut of the season on the highest lawnmower setting. We can hand sow grass seed into bare patches, raking the seed into the soil to assist with germination. We can use a half moon edging tool to straighten off our lawn edges, making our gardens look neat and tidy ready for the warmer days
to come.

We can joyfully start to hand sow the annual seeds of our favourite summer flowers including borage, cosmos, cornflower, poppies, foxglove, wild carrot, corncockle, oxeye daisy and many more. We should plant out begonia, lilies, ranunculus, agapanthus, gladioli, freesia and dahlia on milder days, so to create a long lasting colourful flower display from summer through to the first frost of autumn. These flowers will give us so much pleasure during the long and bright days of summertime.

Please do follow me on Instagram @garden_with_tom for more seasonal gardening advice and tips.