Garden works: Essential cutbacks

Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009 13:52

Is it possible for a gardener not to love June? Borders of fresh foliage are bursting with the first vivid summer colour, the veg plot's delivering delicious salads, peas and broad beans, and pots of summer bedding dazzle now that frosty nights are past.

I'll admit that a little early summer sunshine always brings out the optimist in me, but after two years working on my garden I'm excited to see the bare soil disappear under my own collection of favourite plants. June's the month when many easy-to-grow hardy geraniums are at their best. I'm a fan of the short-lived violet-blue blooms and tidy foliage of Geranium x magnificum and the bold magenta flowers of sprawling G "Ann Folkard", which keep coming all summer. Cistuses or rock roses are useful compact evergreen shrubs that also look great now, adorned with their delicate papery flowers, usually in shades of pink or white. They thrive in well-drained, sunny spots and look great teamed with lavender and rosemary by a south-facing wall. For those more damp, shady areas why not give blue Himalayan poppies (Meconopsis) a try? They flourish in cool Scottish summers given dappled shade. Dawyck Botanic Gardens and Branklyn Garden boast swathes of sky blue at the beginning of this month that gardeners further south can only dream of.

Don't rest on your laurels though, because there's still plenty to do. Beds full of plants naturally keep the weeds down, but warm sunny days are perfect for hoeing off any undesirables that come through. Watch out for bindweed's twining stems and heart-shaped leaves growing through plants and be sure to dig out every scrap of noodle-like root to stop it reappearing time and again. Cut back trailing plants, such as Aubretia, and perennials, such as Pulmonaria and Doronicum, that have finished flowering, so they'll produce a fresh flush of leaves that'll be less prone to mildew. This is also the moment to prune deciduous magnolias and other shrubs whose flowers are spent, such as Weigela and Viburnum tinus.

Introduce summer bedding plants gradually to outdoor conditions before leaving them out over cool nights. Do the same for tender vegetable plants that you've started off under cover, because they can be set back or finished off by low temperatures or blustery winds. It's worth investing in cloches or making your own from the top halves of clear plastic bottles to make the transition as stress-free as possible.