Tom Strowlger
@garden_with_tom
Our gardens are settling into the month of March and we gardeners wave goodbye to winter and say hello to spring. Wintertime always feels like the longest season so the joy of seeing spring sunshine on our gardens is very welcome. The garden will be awakening from winter’s dormancy and the green shoots of spring have started. The daffodils, crocuses, irises and hyacinths are in season and enjoying showing off their flowers.
March can be a changeable month; we can experience warmer days but also frosts and even snowfall. We should use any milder days to enjoy our gardens; take a stroll around the daffodils to check the quality of flowers. If we have any blind daffodils, just green leaves without flowers, then dig up those bulbs and replant them in a different spot in your garden. That may give them another chance of flowering next springtime.
The lawn grass is starting to recover and grow, so we can give it the first cut of the season on the highest lawnmower setting. We can hand sow grass seed onto 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 should use March as our last call to prune roses, hydrangea and buddleia and cut back old foliage of perennials before the appearance of green shoots; we don’t want to risk cutting any new growth amongst the old branches and leaves. As the soil warms up so will roots and you will start to see the leafy shoots of plants like hostas, delphiniums and lupins. If the month is warm then our resident slugs will start their work, so we need to be aware of their fondness for green shoots and protect our plants with a layer of fine sand around their bases.
We can start to hand sow the annual seeds of our favourite flowers including cosmoses,cornflowers, poppies, foxgloves, wild carrots, corncockles, ox-eye daisies and many more. We should plant out dahlia tubers on milder days as they make excellent long lasting flower displays from Summer through to the first frost of Autumn. They will give us gardeners so much pleasure during the hot and heady days of summer.
The garden in spring is a place of pure majesty and we should use all the mild and warm days to dig, plant and sow, as the effort this month will pay floral dividends later in spring and into summertime.
Please do follow me on Instagram @garden_with_tom for more seasonal gardening advice and tips.
This month’s top tips:
Sow grass seed into any lawn patches
Give the lawn a first high cut
Mulch your borders; it will reduce weeds and keep in the moisture
Weed your garden, lifting roots to prevent future growth
Repot containers with fresh compost
