This exciting month brings the new growth of spring awakening, thanks to the ground warming and rising daylength and the gradually increasing warmth of spring sunshine and showers.

Ornamental Garden:

• Remove faded flowers on spring bulbs but not the foliage until it has withered. 
• Keep borders weed-free and Continue mulching.
• If the weather is mild, trim the weak or straggly growth of sage and rosemary.
• Prune Penstemons – cutback last year’s stems down to the new growth – if the weather is very cold delay until the end of the month. 
• Check evergreens for any frost damage – lightly prune if necessary. 
• Look out for early aphid attacks. Pests will be active outdoors as the weather gets warmer.
• Sweet peas can be direct sown now to produce plants that flower later than those sown under glass. 
• Prune early flowering shrubs such as forsythia etc. 
• Plant evergreen trees and shrubs/move existing evergreens if necessary.
• Plant summer flowering bulbs, corms and tubers.
• Come the lawn
• and fertilise the soil, roses, fruit trees & bushes

Vegetable Garden:

• Continue planting potatoes and finish planting onion sets by mid-April. 
• Direct sow vegetables such as beetroot, carrots, lettuce, radish, turnip, peas, spinach and parsnip. 
• Prune young stone fruit trees such as cherries and plums as leaf buds open.
• Sow tomatoes inside