News - Page 129

Give your grasses a haircut and a general tidy-up ahead of the new season. Many grasses hold their shape beautifully over winter, their seedheads and arching leaves making architectural sculptures rimed with frost: if you're looking get the look in your garden, good varieties to choose include Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster', Miscanthus sinensis 'Kleine Fontane' and the evergreen golden oat grass, Stipa gigantea. All are available from yo...

Deadhead orchids as soon as they finish flowering to encourage them to send up a new spike of those luscious, tropical blooms. Phalaenopsis (moth) orchids, available in your favourite garden centre, are by far the easiest to grow, and flower for months right through winter. But once the flowers die down, snip back the stem, cutting just above a swelling around 10cm from the base. A new flowering shoot should spring up soon after.

Water only when the pot feels...

Force rhubarb any time from January onwards for the very earliest fruit in the garden – and one of the best. Forcing (excluding light from growing stems) encourages shoots to grow much earlier than they usually would, sending up growth that's very tender, delicate and sweet.

Start any time between late December until early February by covering the whole crown so that no light can get to the emerging stems. Traditional terracotta forcing jars look lovely and a...

January's plant of the month is the primula - and no wonder. This is one of our prettiest spring flowers. You can see its delicate pale yellow petals spangling hedgerows and grassy banks from March until May.

The wild primrose, Primula vulgaris, and its close relatives the cowslip (Primula veris) and oxslip (Primula elatior) are all delightfully natural-looking and not difficult to grow. They prefer a damp, shady spot – in the dappled shade of a tree is perfe...

Fend off snow damage by getting out into the garden after each heavy fall to check your plants and other structures are holding up well.

Snow isn't as harmful to plants as you'd think – in fact it can serve to protect them from cold damage as it has an insulating, blanketing effect. But a really heavy fall of snow causes problems due to its sheer weight, so take time to run through a simple post-snow checklist to keep damage to a minimum.

• Start b...

Prune wisteria in January and in August for a waterfall of sweetly-scented flowers in early summer. It's hard to beat this elegant, stately climber in its full early summer glory. You'll find shades from pure white through classic pale lilac to a rosy pink in your favourite garden centre: as well as the classic Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis, look out for Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) with dramatic racemes of flowers up to a metre long.

To get...