This Month in Your Garden - August

In summer, the song sings itself -  William Carlos Williams

Weather computer forecast models are telling us August is to be a mixed month. It’s hard to go wrong with that kind of forecast, bit of warm, bit of rain, a little dry, the odd heavy shower. Whatever the weather you won’t keep us gardeners from pottering around especially since the garden has had more than usual attention over the last few months.

There are herbaceous plants that have flowered needing to be cut back, hanging baskets and containers to feed and water, cuttings to be taken from Dianthus and helianthemum, pelargoniums and hydrangeas.

Keep deadheading the roses and they will reward you with flowers into the autumn. It seems it’s been a good year for the roses. You can be sowing some annuals for winter flowering, potting up Chrysanthemums, Cyclamen, Freesias, Hyacinths, Primulas and starting Madonna lilies (Lilium candidum) and arum lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica) into growth.

Wisteria and Pyracantha can be pruned back and hardy annuals sown directly into the ground for next year’s flowering. Give rambling roses over three years old a prune back. 

• Treat sheds, fences and wooden features with a preservative or paint
• Collect seeds from flowering plants and cuttings from tender perennials
• Cut back pansies and violas to promote basal growth
• Check the border for self-sown seedlings and move to where you want them
• Keep an eye out for earwigs on your Dahlias
• Cut flowers you can to dry for decoration
• Sow Brompton stocks in John Innes seed compost in pots
• Take cuttings of pelargonium’s, hydrangeas and half-hardy plants as well as alpines