Take a read of these 5 top tips for a beautiful Spring garden with nine-time Chelsea Flower Show veteran and internationally renowned horticulturalist, Wes Fleming!
1: Prune in Winter: Fruit and ornamental trees are dormant during winter so this is the best time to prune them. A nice haircut in winter will reward you in spring with strong growth and flowering trees like weeping cherries, crab apples and so forth will put on abundant floral shows if pruned neatly in winter.
2: Water through Spring: If you keep water up to winter planted trees throughout spring – all the way to Christmas – the tree will thank you with lots of quality growth. Many people don’t feel the need to water plants until it gets hot but it’s too late to effect good growth if you wait for summer.
3: Fertilise: A light handful of a quality fertiliser in later winter or early spring – around the base of trees and plants is a good idea once a year. It gives the plants a little extra oomph and will leech into the roots as you water through spring.
4: Neat n’ Clean: A winter clean up – raking away old leaf litter, turning over garden bed soils, removing pruned sticks and twigs, throwing around some lawn seed… being diligent in the garden in winter will ensure your spring garden flourishes and will help keep bacteria or fungal diseases to a minimum in spring and summer.
5: Espalier Layers: Before spring kicks in create fruit espaliers or maintain your existing espalier by bending new branches to wires and pruning unwanted branches away, leaving wanted branched to train to new wires. Again in spring the tree will put on great fresh growth and will follow their new form quickly and with little effort.
Thanks Wes! Take a look at some of his work below…
