Welcome to the J Arthur Bower’s Gardening Calendar, aimed at helping you to get the very best from your garden.
Whether you’ve got a balcony, a pocket handkerchief size plot or rolling acres, our calendar will ensure you get all those essential jobs done at the right time of year.
Don’t worry if that sounds a bit of a chore. More than anything, we want you to enjoy your garden. Nature is very forgiving, and if you can’t get something done at the best time, there’s usually an opportunity to catch up later. In fact, many gardeners will tell you that the best time to do a job is when you remember it! However, there are some tasks that are best done at a particular time – if this is the case, our calendar will tell you why.
Of course, there’s one big unknown in all of this – the weather. Climate change means that our weather has become much more unpredictable and extreme. You only have to contrast the summers of 2006 and 2007 to see the difficulty. In 2006, June and July were unusually hot and dry with record-breaking temperatures across the UK; in 2007 June and July were the wettest on record with temperatures and hours of sunshine well below average. The result was in 2006 we had parched lawns and plants shrivelling in the heat, in 2007 we had flooded gardens and plants rotting in the ground. In contrast the harsh winter of December 2010 when snow covered many parts of the UK with extreme low temperatures damaged many lawns and evergreens and the full extent of the damage can not be known until spring when trees and shrubs have had time to recover.
For each month of the year we will give a detailed guide about the expected weather based on average conditions. As well, there will be a Weather Watch brief in our Seasonal Tips, which will be updated regularly to reflect what’s really going on in any given month.
In each month you’ll find an Essential Jobs Checklist followed by a more detailed guide to tasks around the garden. Most of our advice will apply wherever you live, but do bear in mind that timings will be slightly delayed the further north you live. Further hints and tips about the different tasks can be found in our separate Garden Expert section. The calendar also has links to the various J Arthur Bower's and New Horizon products mentioned so you can find out more about them.
If you can’t find the information you need take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions sections, which covers a wide range of common queries about different areas of the garden. And if you’re still stuck, then you can e-mail us.
