Spring is in the air and with the increase in temperature and day light your garden will be bursting into life. Acclaimed garden designer Richard Miers has a few tips and ideas for you.

Design Tips

1.Paint walls/fence. Rich dark colours are very fashionable at the moment and make the boundaries of your garden ‘disappear’ to the eye and show off white flowers beautifully.

2.Add a focal point – a new sculpture, water feature or a garden mirror. Something to draw you out into the garden to explore.

3.Buy some new garden furniture and give yourself a reason to linger in comfort with that coffee or glass of wine.

4.Add lighting to allow yourself to enjoy your garden later on into the evenings even if it is just a trail of fairy lights.

5.Plant new herbaceous perennials and shrubs. For example for partial shade and shade tolerant plants go for ferns, and plants like Camellias, Rhododendrons, Sarcococca confusa, Hydrangea macrophylla ’Zebra’, Anemone × hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’, Iris ‘Tropic Night’, Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Mariesii’ and Geranium phaeum ‘Album’. For the sunnier positions try long flowering perennials such as Geranium × johnsonii ‘Johnson’s Blue’, Campanula poscharskyana and Erigeron karvinskianus.

6. Add repeat flowering roses like Rosa ‘Desdemona’ or Rosa ‘Queen of Sweden’ to your beds or borders.

7. Get Richard in to help!

Practical Tips

1. So it is time for a quick tidy up. You of course cleared up all the leaves in the autumn and sprayed against algae…if you didn’t its definitely time to get out the jet wash and clean your terrace, walls and furniture. No one needs to slip or get green marks on their clothes when visiting.

2.Check your garden for slugs, snails, vine weevils and other pests and take appropriate measures.

3. If you haven’t been plagued by the Box Tree Caterpillar in previous years, spray against them and add a pheromone trap to catch them before they lay their eggs.

4.Tie in climbers, trim the roses, clematis, and hydrangeas.

5.Spring is your last chance to by bare root plants, roses and trees.

6. Cut back overgrown plants and bushes. Use the 4-D rule for pruning the trees and shrubs: cut dead, diseased, damaged and decaying branches. Afterwards it is easier to see what shape you can achieve with more formulative pruning.

7.Irrigation, install a new system or check the old one for leaks. Very handy if you have lots of containers and like to go away in the summer.

8. Don’t forget to wear gloves when working with poisonous plants like Digitalis (Foxglove) , Euphorbia, Convallaria majalis, and Aconitum’s.

9.Pop out into the parks to see what spring bulbs catch your eye (eg Snowdrops, Crocus, Daffodils, and Tulips to name a few) and then order them now and mark out on a plan where you would might like to plant them in the autumn. If you already have bulbs leave the foliage until it has dried out completely before removing.

10.Reseed your lawn.​

11. If you have a lawn and only time for one job after mowing, get edging as the crisp clean line created will make you whole garden look much smarter and tidier.

My final tip of course is to employ a gardener to do all the hard work and leave the fun bits for yourself! If you would like to ask me a question or enquire about my services then you can do that through Almost Essential by clicking here.