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There are several new issues to look out for when maintaining your garden:
•    Adult vine weevil – one of the worst pests to infect our gardens is making an appearance as the temperatures start rising.  – Ensure your plants are well protected!
•    Regular mowing – Ensure to cut your grass weekly as long grass take the nutrients out of the soil.
•    Other slugs and snails – Keep an eye out for snails and slugs as they will eat away your plants. Buy some pet-friendly slug pellets, course grit or traps. Invite birds, hedgehogs and frogs to your garden as they all prey on slugs and snails.

Things to do:
•    April is the best time to plant an evergreen, such as laurel or box.
•    If you haven’t done so already, try planting lavender! Widely grown for its scent and foliage, lavender is ideal for borders or a low hedge. Lavender can give your garden a full range of bright colours from purple, blue, white and pink.
•    As daffodils fade, remove the flower heads. Don’t cut back the leaves – leave them to die back naturally. However if you want to tidy them up, wait until the leaves have yellowed before removing.

At Artscape, Berkshire’s leading Garden Designers we know the amount of effort involved having twice won ‘Best Garden’ at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Efforts are concentrated on getting the timing right and inevitably that means a considerable amount of work well before the garden building commences a couple of weeks before the show itself.

See more of our recent garden design awards.

Artscape, prestige garden designers based in Berkshire, help their clients choose the perfect features from a range of suppliers, many supplying products that you won’t find anywhere else. These unique products include unusual water features, scupltures,  and pots. Of course we have considerable knowledge of planting – over 25 years in fact – so we help our clients create gardens that are very special.

Producing a design that matches the client’s needs and then choosing every element from the plants to the features is something that requires considerable experience. Not only, being able to design but knowledge of plants, materials and suppliers to be able to produce truly special gardens.

See a small selection of the gardens that Artscape have designed and built.

Now is a time for a bit of a ’spring clean’:

• Dig over borders
• Incorporate as much organic matter as you can
• Remove moss and weeds from paths, terraces and driveways

Growing vegetables

Hardy vegetables such as cabbage, broccoli, radishes and beets, can be planted from seed as soon as the soil begins to warm up.

Vegetable seeds can be started indoors for earlier flowers and produce. Plant seeds three to six weeks before they are to be planted outside.

Flowers

Gladiolus and begonia bulbs can be planted now. For a continuous bloom of gladiolus, plant some every two weeks until mid July.

Spring flowering shrubs, such as forsythia and lilacs, could be pruned now, but flowers will be cut off if they are pruned before they bloom. Wait until summer to prune plants that are too big.

Roses should be pruned in late February or early March to remove old, unproductive and thin, weak canes. Bush types are cut to 12 to 18″ tall. Shrub roses should be left about three feet tall. Climbers should be thinned if tangled.

However if you want to look after the garden yourself, or want to do extra gardening here are a few ideas of things you should be doing this autumn.

September and October are the perfect months for you to get outside while the weather is still mild and prepare your garden for the harsh winter months. The first step is to clear up the beds, removing the dead leaves and foliage (turning these into compost if you can) and making way for the groundwork which will keep your plants happy even when the weather is miserable.

Weed and clean

The next job is to weed and clean the paths before spraying them with an organic weed killer which will keep the nasties at bay but which won’t do any damage to the environment. Cleaning your paths now will save you a big job in the spring when you finally brave the gardening which you’ve put off for the cold winter months.

Expand your garden

If you are looking to expand your garden or have a complete overhaul, autumn is actually the best time of year to do this as new plants can make a strong start and ‘bed in’ before the cold weather takes hold and starts to make life difficult for them. The same is true if you wish to relay a lawn, the seed should be given a chance to take root and become strong before the cold weather takes over.

Give it a last feed

Think of your garden as going into hibernation over the winter, just as animals store food during the summer and autumn in order to survive the winter, so too should your garden with your help. Clear the moss or weeds from any areas of grass and give the grass one last feed before winter sets in, this will help it to stay alive.

Tips courtesy of Co-op Magazine

If you are considering redesigning your garden, then starting now will ensure that you get the most possible use out of your garden next spring. By working on the garden design now – it will take a few weeks – and then a planting plan, work can start on construction and, where appropriate, planting during the winter. So when spring arrives your new garden will be ready for use and coming to life to give you pleasure for the whole year.

If you leave it then you may find that just when you are hoping to sit out in the sun – you may remember that we had a hot spell in April in 2011 – the construction and planting may not be finished.

If you would like to speak to someone about garden design give Artscape a call on 01628 629238. We provide garden design and build for clients in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Oxfordshire and London.

2. Start composting
Winter gives cuttings and leaves a chance to break down and produce nutrient-rich compost, which will be ready for boosting the garden in the new year. Now is also a really good time to turn your compost heap. It will heat up nicely and then gently rot over winter.

3. Embrace autumn colour
Deciduous trees will provide lovely autumn colours from foliage, bark and berries. Autumn flowers such as crocus add colour, too. Cyclamens come in white and a range of pink shades with glossy green leaves, and add a welcome dash of vibrancy.

4. Love your lawn
For a lovely lawn next spring, start to mow less frequently and raise the height of the grass as the growth rate slows down. Scarify your lawn by raking out dead grass and moss that has built up over the summer. Follow this with applying a high-potassium autumn lawn feed, which will release the correct balance of nutrients throughout the winter.

5. Cover up the furniture
When there is no more need for garden furniture, store it in the shed or garage to protect it from the winter weather and allow it to dry out. If you can’t do this, cover it with a tough waterproof sheet securely fixed down, taking care to allow plenty of air to circulate so that the furniture is not damp all winter. Wooden items, such as benches or pergolas, may benefit from a treatment of preservative.

Hard necks: these varieties are hardier than soft necks. They produce a flower stalk which should be chopped off so that the plant’s energy goes into making a larger bulb.

Soft necks: These keep less well than hard necks and are sometimes eaten ‘green’. They have many culinary uses but are particularly good raw in salad dressings.

The cookbook has a very useful guide to the garlic year.  Here is an abbreviation, covering autumn and early winter:

September: Plant elephant garlic, early varieties: ‘Early Purple Wight’, ‘Early Wight’.  Apply general purpose fertilizer to the soil, or some well-rotted manure, well worked in.

October: Plant autumn soft necks: ‘Iberian’, ‘Albigensian‘, ‘Mediterranean’, ‘Provence’.  Plant in November too.

November: Plant autumn hard necks: ‘Purple Moldovan’, ‘Chesnok’.

December: ‘Lautrec’ can be planted now.

• cut the lawn less frequently than usual
• raise the height of lawnmower blades
• use a sprinkler on the lawn in the evening.  Water lawns thoroughly to saturate the top 10cm to 15cm (4in to 6in) of soil but check there is no hose pipe ban in the area.  Avoid walking on the lawn if possible
• scarify the lawn in autumn.  A build-up of thatch in the summer could prevent water from penetrating the lawn
• aerate soil with a fork to help water penetrate the roots of the grass