Refresh Your Garden After the Festive Season
Revitalize Plants and Borders
Boosting Color and Controlling Pests
Tidy border edges by filling gaps in the front of the border with a few low-growing plants to add depth and colour. Erigeron, Dianthus, Heucheras, Sedums, Lavender and Agastache, with its spikes of blue flowers, much loved by butterflies.
Add quick-maturing annuals like Marigolds, Salvias, Gazanias, Cosmos and Echinacea, with a few coloured grasses to ramp up the colour and look stunning. Water well after planting and spread plenty of mulch on the soil to retain moisture.
Keep checking for bugs like aphids and red spider mite which need to be dealt with constantly. Always use a home-made organic spray, and try to encourage wildlife to the garden to help keep these bugs at bay.
Encourage Growth for the Coming Seasons
Cut back, lift and divide clumps of Agapanthus, Dietes and Penstemon. Replant around the border in freshly composted soil. Lightly fertilise the plant to encourage flowers in the Autumn. Summer-flowering evergreen shrubs will look better for a light pruning as soon as the flowers fade to enable the shrub to store energy for the next seasons flowering.
All flower borders and vegetable plots will benefit from some added fertiliser now, not forgetting a liquid fertiliser for containers and hanging baskets every 4 weeks.