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Monday 3 June 2013

This Month in your Garden – June


Could it be that June is everyone’s favourite month in the garden? Certainly summer is almost here, roses are starting to bloom, borders are awash with flowers, bees and butterflies abound. 

The garden is putting on a show and continues to amaze us with all nature has to offer. But even if you’re being rewarded for all your efforts in earlier months and just feel like sitting back and taking it all in we gardeners are thinking about next spring. Simply because there’s plenty to be done to prepare for next year’s even more impressive show. And lots to do now to add to your summer display.

If you have room for a nursery bed you can sow perennials and biennials now for placing in flowering areas in the autumn, ready for next year. Perennials easy to raise from seed include aquilegias, lupins, oriental poppies, hollyhocks, delphiniums and rock plants such as aubretias, Alyssum saxatile and Campanula carpatica. 

You can sow anemones, St. Brigid and de Caen from seed outdoors and they will flower next summer. Germinate winter pansies sown on moist compost in pots or trays covered with vermiculite or sieved compost. They need to be kept dark and cool to germinate so cover with black polythene to exclude light and put them in a shady place outdoors. You can grow them on until October and then plant them out for winter colour and masses of spring blooms.

Plant out tender bedding you’ve held back, including dahlias, begonias, salvias, heliotropes and cannas as well as foliage plants such as abutilons and cordylines. Divide auriculas, polyanthuses and primroses around mid June and you can divide old clumps of mossy saxifrages.
  • Sow hellebores from seed taken from flower before they dry and split
  • Grow tender flowers in pots and containers  - pelargoniums, marguerites and petunias, you can take them indoors in October for putting out next year.
  • Train climbers: especially roses, vines
  • Cut back aubrietias, arabis and perennial candytuft
  • Sow Brompton stocks and forget-me-nots
  • Lift and divide June flowering irises
  • Start to bud roses later in the month
  • Sow wallflowers, sweet Williams, Iceland poppies
  • Place pot grown chrysanthemums outside
  • Trim hedges
  • Dig up self sown seedlings to plant elsewhere or give away
  • Deadhead roses to encourage more flowers in late summer
  • Take cuttings of sage and rosemary

PRUNING TIPS
Prune early flowering shrubs immediately after they have flowered: weigela, philadelphus, kolkwitzia, deutzia, later in the month. Prune brooms annually. Cut back Clematis Montana.


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