This Month in your Garden - February

The time-honoured pastime in January into February of settling into a comfortable armchair and browsing the new seed catalogues could be easily interrupted. A little sunshine peeking through, a warmer day and you could be out there with the hoe, clearing weeds in beds and breaking up the surface soil where winter frosts have done their work. 

Fading snowdrops can be lifted and single bulbs replanted a good few centimetres apart. You could be cutting back old stems in herbaceous borders, doing a bit more digging, spending time in the greenhouse sowing sweet peas to germinate, starting Dahlias in gentle heat.

Outside again, making a new bed for strawberries and clearing other beds ready for planting, tidying up winter flowering heathers, deadheading winter pansies, planting container-grown trees and shrubs will all keep you busy and warm. 

Dig in a top dressing of manure on unused ground. If you plant roses early in the month you might need to prune them after about four weeks. Train climbers to where you want them to go.

Sow antirrhinums, begonias, impatiens, lobelias, petunias, pansies, verbenas and violas under gentle heat, in a greenhouse or on the windowsill. 

• Prepare lawn sites to be turfed
• Order bedding plug plants to grow on in the greenhouse
• Start dahlia tubers into growth in the greenhouse
• Plant hardy climbers if the soil is not too waterlogged
• Take root cuttings of acanthus, eryngiums, Japanese anemones, oriental poppies and phlox
• Hard prune ivy on walls
• Take care of indoor plants – pot on if needed
• Plant lily bulbs in well-drained soil in a sunny spot or plant in pots in the greenhouse
• Dig over the vegetable garden