This Month In Your Garden - November

“Dull November brings the blast, then the leaves are whirling fast.” – Sara Coleridge

The month of leaves and tulips. If you have a largish garden and trees shedding leaves everywhere, you’ll save a great deal of time by investing in a power blower. You’ll quickly clear the lawn and borders to create piles of leaves you can bag up to make leaf compost or pile them onto the compost heap.

Job done, you can move on to the pleasurable task of planting tulips for next year’s spring display and it’s not too late to plant daffodil bulbs as well. Pruning continues, with the roses high on the list to prevent wind-rock, and apple and pear trees will appreciate a good prune to thin them out and let the light in come spring. In the border you may prefer to leave dead stems of some plants to give structure and as a habitat for wildlife. If not, it’s time to finish cutting faded herbaceous perennials, lifting and dividing them to increase your stock and display.

Root cuttings are another way of propagating your supply of plants for next year. It’s time to get the last bedding plants in before the ground gets too hard: winter pansies, Primula and primrose, Bellis and wallflowers make colourful displays. Sweet peas can be sown in pots and placed in an unheated greenhouse or cold frame. Plant up containers and even your own hanging baskets for winter colour, while containers with tender plants can be wrapped with bubble wrap for insulation.

Bare rooted roses, honeysuckles, clematis, jasmine along with deciduous or coniferous hedging will all like being planted up now. Flower borders will benefit from being dug over then left, to allow the winter frosts to break down the soil into a good tilth and planting medium.

• Cut back ornamental grasses and bamboos
• Clean up the greenhouse and get leaves off ponds and rockeries
• Protect alpines from the wet
• Plant Magnolias
• Compost organic garden and kitchen waste adding leaves and grass cuttings
• Mulch plants such as Agapanthus, Kniphofia and the crowns of Penstemons  
• Work leafmould, manure or garden compost into flower beds
• Fork over herbaceous borders and hoe out weeds