Celebrate the Autumn Equinox with Some Garden Care and Maintenance

You might think the season for spending time in the garden is over, and for the most part you’d be right, but the gardening season certainly isn’t finished. In fact, it’s just kicking into gear again. This weekend marks the beginning of the autumn equinox and even though those evenings are starting to draw in, there’s still plenty of work to be done in the garden, whether it’s preparing for the winter frosts, or adding a bit of autumnal colour to your borders…

Late Bloomers and New Plantings

It’s not just spring time that’s all about the planting – with the soil still nice and warm at this time of year, it’s the perfect opportunity for seeds to germinate. For starters, you can replant some of those pots and borders with late bloomers such as pansies or chrysanthemums, or year-round perennials, heathers, and ornamental greens.

This is also a good time to plant new vegetables for the spring as well as fruit trees. In fact, this weekend also marks the start of the official Seed Gathering Season, and the Tree Council is encouraging people to find dried seeds in their local parks and surroundings and try planting them in their own back gardens.

Caring for Your Lawn

Although the falling leaves create a lovely colour palette and inspire numerous pretty photographs, when they fall on your lawn, they can also create a few practical problems. It’s important not to leave them to fester as they can affect the health of your grass, so make sure you take a bit of time out to regularly rake and keep that lawn leaf free.

As with the planting of the plants and seeds, the warm soil and prospect of rain also means this is the ideal opportunity to repair any bare patches by planting lawns seeds. Remember to feed the lawn before the winter kicks and you increase your chances of a greener patch come the spring.

Weeding and Tidying

No one wants to tackle weeds in the winter. In fact, no one can tackle weeds in the winter because the chances are they’ll be frozen solid. So don’t put off this task, no matter how tempting – get your hands on those weeds in the autumn, particularly the tough, stubborn ones, because if you don’t, this job will be so much harder next year.

It’s also a good idea to have a general tidy up and clean of any paving or decking you have for the very same reason – frost and cold weather will just perpetuate any problems, so getting rid of all the summer dust and dirt before it gets really cold makes much more sense in the long run.

If you need to stock up on gardening accessories or want to pick from a good selection of autumnal plants, there are plenty of online savings available right now. Waitrose can save you 20% on autumn colours, One Garden have a large selection of autumn offers to choose from, and You Garden  can get you 10% off your order when you spend £20 or more. So if you care about your garden, show it a little bit of TLC this autumn and it will reward you with some beautiful blooms and a lot less gardening stress come the spring.

By Anna Scott, 24th September 2016