JANUARY GARDEN NOTES

By John Draper
While there is plenty of time left before we feel that spring is really with us, you can use this time to write down the good and the bad points of your 2009 garden. Make a note of the pleasing plants, good combinations of colours and successful fruit and vegetables you have seen in other peoples gardens or in a magazine that you would like to try growing.

Beds & Borders
You can now start to plant the garden for the future. Remember that a garden is three dimensional, so a flat plan is okay to plot out a pleasing mixture of shapes and curves, so long as you then bear in mind the height of the plants you have or the vertical space that is available.
Clothing walls, fences and other vertical surfaces with flower and foliage colour is very fashionable and well worth the effort. Unless you have a large garden, forget tall trees and bushes, because they take up valuable soil area as well as shade the other plants around them. You may find you have been growing some traditional plants that take up a lot of room for the flower power they offer.

Growing Your Own
Get digging bare ground to be used for vegetable crops. Add a good layer of well-rotted garden compost or a proprietary soil improver and mulch to the surface before you dig it over and leave in rough clumps.
Frost will work during remaining winter months to break down the heavy lumps of clay and they should be crumbly by the spring.
Just as it is a good time to plant roses, it’s also a good time to plant fruit trees and bushes. Talk to the staff at your local garden centre or nursery to learn of the advantages of modern varieties

Patio Tubs & Baskets
Gone are the days when patio pots were used to display just summer flowering bedding. Plant breeders have developed shrubs, fruit bushes and even small trees that are suitable for permanent cultivation in containers. Look for dwarf conifers, topiary box or Pieris and Skimmias of various shapes and sizes to provide some permanent foliage interest or ericaceous plants such as camellia, rhododendron and azalea to provide spring colour.
Remember that the roots and compost of plants growing in patio pots can freeze solid if the containers are not given enough protection. The roots of even hardy plants can be killed in a prolonged spell of really cold weather. For more details visit the website www.greenergardens.co.uk