This Month in your Garden – February

Spring is in the air

It can seem churlish to always blame the weather in February for not getting things done in the garden. True, it’s a mixed bag of a month but there are usually enough days to catch up on any digging, pruning and feeding roses, cutting out and replacing turf (a sod cutter is handy for this) and preparing vegetable seed beds.


If you haven’t started chitting potatoes do so now to prepare for a good crop later in the year. Spring will already be heralded by bulbs making an appearance – daffodils were peeping through in late December, and if you planted snowdrops, crocuses and Irises you should be enjoying their colour.

You can lift and divide snowdrops ‘in the green’ and remove faded flowers from winter pansies so they don’t set seed. Prune winter flowering shrubs after their display: jasmine nudiflorum, Mahonia, Viburnham x bodnantense and cut back Cornus and Salix down to their bases. Prune Wisteria and, later in the month, summer flowering Clematis.

There’s still time to plant fruit trees, deciduous ornamental trees, shrubs and roses in early February.

• Cut back ornamental grasses before they start growth
• Net fruit and vegetables to protect from birds
• You can move deciduous trees and shrubs if the ground is not waterlogged or frozen
• Plant Lillies and Allium bulbs
• Prepare vegetable seed beds and grow seeds under cover
• Sow leeks, onions and celeriac under cover
• Prune hardy evergreen hedges
• Complete pruning of apple and pear trees, currants and gooseberries