Essential Gardening Checklist for January

• Improve your soil
• Purchase seeds
• Start to sow seeds such as Sweet peas
• Tidy your shed and sharpen tools
• Clean your greenhouse and plant pots ready for spring
• Prune apple and pear trees
• Prune Wisteria and roses if you haven’t already done so
• Keep putting out food and water for birds
• Warm the soil in preparation for planting vegetables outdoors

Ornamental plants

What flowers and bulbs to plant in January

At this time of year, most of the flower and bulb planting goes on indoors, but there are still a few flowers to plant outdoors in January, especially if your garden needs some winter colour.

Plant outdoors:

• Hellebores
• Snowdrops in flower

Sow indoors in a propagator

• Antirrhinums (snapdragons)
• Lobelia
• Sweet peas

What flowers to prune in January

• Wisteria: give this climber its winter prune in late January, cutting back last year’s summer growth to 2-3 buds from the main framework.

Flower maintenance in January

• Remove old hellebore foliage, to stop the spread of hellebore black spot and make the flowers easier to see.
• Deadhead winter bedding such as violas to promote a second flush of flowers in early spring.
• Keep deadheading winter-flowering pansies to ensure they flower during mild weather.
• Clear away any old soggy leaves from perennials, but leave a few dead stems standing to provide homes for overwintering wildlife.
• Cut back the dead leaves from deciduous ornamental grasses like Calamagrostis and Deschampsia. Wait until early spring to cut back Miscanthus and Pennisetum, which need a bit more protection from winter frosts.
• If you’ve had pots of forced daffodils and hyacinths flowering indoors over winter, leave them somewhere bright until the foliage dies back, then store the bulbs in a frost-free place for replanting next autumn. The hyacinth bulbs can also be planted outside now, and should flower again in a year’s time.
  

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