Summer jobs in your garden

We don't know about you, but looking at our summer gardens, large or small, just puts us in a really good mood. And while summer is the perfect time to relax and enjoy your hard work, there are a few things you can do this season to make sure your garden stays healthy and looks beautiful. Have a wander round it with our list of summer garden jobs, and don’t forget to take a refreshing, cold drink with you. Even if you don't get much done, at least you’ll have made a plan.

Garden clearance

Trees and shrubs can often shed small branches and early quantities of fruit. Sweep them up and either burn them or put them in the organic recycling bins.

Seasonal pruning

It’s time to prune late spring-flowering deciduous shrubs such as philadelphus, deutzia and jasmine. Once they’ve finished flowering, pruning will help them produce new growth in order to flower again next year. Clipping and pruning hedges will give them a good shape for the rest of the season, and midsummer is also the time for any remedial pruning needed on fruit bushes and trees.

Lawn

Lawns will need their regular cycle of care and cutting. Cut at the lowest height on the lawnmower and remember to water them during dry spells. A good soak every so often is better than a bit of water every day, as the former method encourages deeper growing root systems, leading to more drought-tolerant lawns.

Late summer will be the time to scarify the lawn - that is, remove any build-up of dead material - and also to do hollow-fork tining, or creating lots of small holes to relieve the compaction caused by frequent human traffic.

Maintenance of hard landscaping

Now’s the time to complete the wood-preservative treatment of fencing, summer houses and sheds, and also to do any construction work such as paving, concreting and wall building. Complete any repairs to greenhouses that are required before autumn and winter.

Planting and maintenance

You can put the last of the seasonal bedding plants out in June. By September, you’ll be taking them out and replenishing the soil with manure and organic composts.

Roses need regular deadheading and feeding to make them bloom and stay strong for longer. Remove any diseased leaves to prevent rust and blackspot spreading, and order any new plants now for delivery in November.

Prune the new growth on wisteria in August and reduce the new stems to the first two to three leaflets in order to produce flowering spurs for next year.

Lift and store tulips and daffodils for replanting later in autumn, thus allowing them to dry off properly. Choose your new bulbs from the catalogues and concentrate on the different colour combinations and sequences you would like to create for spring next year.

Bed and border maintenance is essential in summer. Cut back early flowering plants such as lupins and delphiniums and continue dead-heading in order to encourage a lovely later second display that will take you to the very end of September.  Dispose of all sickly or diseased material by burning - do not put any of it into your compost bins.

Garden ponds

Cover ponds with netting to catch falling leaves. Remove large lily leaves which might be covering flowers and remove all weeds from the bog garden. Replace any lost water from the pond.

And relax....

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