✔ There’s still time to plant daffodils, bluebells, crocuses and other spring bulbs. Plant drifts of bulbs in your lawn where they can naturalise and spread, creating a beautiful woodland
effect.

✔ Now’s the ideal time to plant new shrubs and trees, or to move existing ones, giving them time to settle in over winter

✔ Wrap delicate plants such as tree ferns and bananas in garden fleece to protect them from frosts, and move citrus trees and other tender plants into the greenhouse.

✔ Rake leaves off lawns so that the winter sunlight can reach the grass. Store the leaves in piles or bags to break down into leafmould, a superb soil improver.

✔ Top up bird baths and fill bird feeders with energy-rich winter foods like peanuts, sunflowers and suet balls.

✔ Tie in plants to supports to keep them safe in autumn winds.

✔ Cut back faded perennials, but leave a few hollow flowerstems standing to provide shelter
for overwintering insects.

✔ Mulch beds with well-rotted farmyard manure or bark chippings to suppress weeds, feed
the soil and improve soil structure

✔ Lift and divide overgrown clumps of perennials like hostas and daylilies

✔ Clear fallen rose leaves to reduce the spread of black spot and other fungal spores. Burn the leaves or put them in your council green waste collection bin, not on your compost
heap.

✔ Prune climbing roses, and cut tall shrub and bush roses back by a third to reduce wind rock over winter.

✔ Plant out spring cabbage and winter lettuce seedlings

✔ Sow kale and spinach in the greenhouse for baby leaves, delicious in salads.

✔ Harvest pumpkins and squash before the frosts turn them mushy

✔Once you’ve harvested all your French and runner beans, cut the plants down at ground level, leaving the roots in the ground to release nitrogen back into the soil.

✔ Harvest any remaining maincrop potatoes.