Winter is hardly the season to start planting flowers and plants but keen gardeners will know that winter is a very important time for your garden. Winter gives garden owners the opportunity to plan for the New Year and gives you the opportunity to rejuvenate your garden ready for the start of the gardening season in spring. Here are some of our top tips for gardening during the winter months.
Don’t stop planting
This is one of the most important things to remember over the winter season – continue to garden and plant. As long as the temperatures aren’t sub-zero you can continue to plant flowers and plants year-round. There are a variety of plants suitable for the winter period; some of our favourites are crocus – a stunning purple and yellow flowering plant from the iris family, and snowdrops – a popularly delicate flower which springs to life during the colder months.
Start thinking about next year
You should continue to plant but bear in mind that winter is the perfect season for down time and is the ideal time to start planning a bit of a landscape gardening project for your backyard. You can start thinking about changing the layout, looking at different features you can incorporate into your garden and generally think about making improvements that will benefit you and anyone else that uses the garden.
Take care of the wildlife
If you think your office is cold on a Monday morning, try living outside in your back garden year round. It’s therefore important to think about the native wildlife that is housed in your garden over the colder months. To provide some protection for the wildlife you might want to consider planting some shrubs such as hawthorn or blackthorn. The shrubs can provide nourishment through the berries and will offer an all important nesting area for the birds. If you want to ensure your garden remains a natural habitat for birds over winter consider placing a water feature in your garden – birds are very particular about keeping clean and having running water that doesn’t freeze over will encourage the little creatures to stick around.
Providing a winter habitat for bugs can also offer a multitude of benefits- leaving your grass uncut over the winter months can help it to retain nutrience and moisture whilst providing a sheltered area for worms and insects – birds can then feed on these little critters whilst nesting in your shrubs.
Winter is not the season to forget about your garden; in fact it should be the opposite. Winter is the perfect time to start thinking of ideas to reinvent your garden and evaluate what you really want, and need from your backyard.
Do you have any winter gardening tips that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comment section below.
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Karen Chapman
I’ve been trying to find a way to get in touch with you! You have a stunning photo from 2009 of the winter garden at Angelsey Abbey which I’d love to use (with credits) in a PowerPoint to design students. Who do I ask for permission? Thanks!
great site by the way!
F&F
Hi Karen, you’ll need to get in touch with the National Trust’s press office.