In March your garden wakes up from its winter sleep and this is the time to prepare your garden for a colourful and fragrant spring. Time to roll up your sleeves and enjoy a garden full of flowers and greenery.
Want a garden full of colour and fragrance this spring? These favourites will complete your garden:
Garden products in the spotlight
- Buddleja Little: Compact butterfly bush with long flowering period, ideal for bees and butterflies.
- Ceanothus (American lilac): Blue flowering shrub, a real eye-catcher.
Jasmine pyramid & Jasmine on stick: Beautiful fragrant eye-catchers in various colours.
- Lonicera (Honeysuckle): Strong climbing plant with fragrant flowers, perfect for pergolas.
- Campsis (Trumpet Flower): Fast growing climbing plant with exotic trumpet-shaped flowers.
- Passiflora (Passion Flower): Mystical flowers with evergreen leaves for a romantic garden.
- Lavender on stem: Fragrant, compact and ideal for pots and borders.
What can you do this month?
- Planting summer flowering bulbs: dahlias, gladioli, begonias and freesias, bloom in summer. Plant them after the frost.
- Remove winter protection: remove winter protection from your plants, but be alert for late night frosts.
- Plant flowering shrubs and climbers: Ceanothus (American lilac) provides a lush blue sea of flowers in the spring and Campsis (Trumpet flower), Lonicera (Honeysuckle) and Passiflora (Passion flower) brighten up walls and pergolas.
- Eye-catchers in pots on the terrace: plant jasmine pyramid or jasmine on a stick (white, pink, yellow) for a fragrant terrace in bloom.
- Fertilizing spring bloomers: give perennials and spring bloomers an extra boost for strong growth.
- Sowing vegetables: sow spinach, radishes and lettuce directly in the open ground.
- Lawn maintenance: scarify, fertilize and reseed bare spots to prepare the lawn for summer.
- Compost heap: create a compost heap for sustainable reuse of green waste.
- Garden furniture: clean garden furniture for the new outdoor season.
Pruning in March
- Olive tree (Olea): Prune inward growing and dead branches. Vertical branches may be pruned rigorously; horizontal branches retain the characteristic shape.
- Oleander (Nerium): Prune only for shaping or to limit size.
- Hydrangea: Rejuvenate the plant by removing 1/5 of the old branches and dead flowers.
- Butterfly bush (Buddleja): Prune to 30-50cm above ground for maximum flowering.
- Clematis: Cut back to 20-25 cm above the ground; the plant will grow back naturally.
- Roses: Remove woody, old branches and prune above outward-facing buds.
- Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum): after flowering in March, to 3 to 4 pairs of leaves. A pair of leaves is that part of the branch where two leaves grow opposite each other. One on the left and one on the right at approximately the same height.
- Lavender: Drastic pruning (1/3 of the plant but keeping some leaves) should be done from mid-March to early April, so that it will bloom profusely in the summer.
- Berry bushes: Most berry bushes can be pruned in the spring.
Small jobs
- Sow annuals indoors or in a greenhouse.
- Check potted plants for growing space and repot if necessary.
- Wait to put container plants outside because of possible frost.
- Get a rain barrel to save water during dry periods.
- Give outdoor plants organic fertilizer and houseplants plant food.
- Leave leaf piles for hibernating hedgehogs.
- Check and clean pond pumps and filters and remove dead plants.
- Dig over the vegetable garden, but not too deeply to protect soil life.
- Knot willows before mid-March.
Have fun gardening!
