Gardeners' notes - jobs to do in January
Cut back hellebore leaves
If you have hellebores in your garden they’ll benefit from a tidy up around now. Cut all leaves back to the ground and you should discover emerging flower shoots, which will benefit from a little more air and light. Cutting back the old leaves not only makes the plant look better by removing any tatty foliage, but it will also help control black spot, which is quite common in hellebores, infecting leaves with dead, brown patches.
With the old foliage removed, new leaves will grow from the base of the plant, providing a fresh, green backdrop for the emerging blooms.
Don’t worry if your hellebores droop suddenly on a frosty morning - you haven’t killed them! This is their clever way of making sure they don’t get damaged by the cold, ensuring snow or freezing rain slides off and does no lasting harm. Their dramatic droop is only temporary - when the temperatures lift they’ll be back to normal, standing upright again.
Winter pond care
Pond activity is slow in winter time, but water features still need some maintenance to make sure they're well oxygenated and a healthy environment for residents and garden visitors.
Keep the water clear of leaves and other debris, which can rot down and use up oxygen. Making sure you spread out any plant material on the side to allow any little creatures caught up inside to crawl back to the water.
Avoid using pumps or fountains - these aren’t effective at preventing freezing. Instead leave a ball or floating block in the pond to create a breathing hole when the surface is frozen solid. It’s also a good idea to brush any snow off the top of the ice, as pondweed needs light to oxygenate.
Get ready to grow!
The garden may still be slow and sleepy, perhaps there’s even a layer of frost or snow over everything - but that doesn’t mean we can’t begin our gardening year. It’s the perfect time to sort seeds, plan crops and order what we need for the season ahead.
Grab a cup of tea, a notebook, a plant catalogue and your box of seeds; go through them and note what you enjoyed growing last year, what didn’t work so well, what you’re going to give up on, what needs another go. Check the dates on unopened packets and decide whether to bin any which are out of date or whether to give them a try (sometimes they’re worth sowing anyway with low expectations - you might be surprised!).
Then make a note of what’s missing, your favourites or old reliables, and anything new you want to try to grow. Then comes the good bit: scour the catalogues - online or paper - and get ordering your seeds for the coming year. When they arrive, store them somewhere cool, ready for that first dry and sunny day when you’ll be ready to pop them into the soil and get growing.
