One of King Charles’ senior gardeners has explained that there are five jobs you should be sure to undertake this Bank Holiday weekend to create a garden fit for a king
If you want to learn to garden like royalty and create a green space fit for a king, then you should start cracking on with these five jobs over the Bank Holiday weekend.
King Charles is a man of many interests, but his passion for horticulture is second to none, and over decades he has been hands-on in designing and creating the impressive gardens at Highgrove House, which attract thousands of visitors every year.
Now he has taken the throne, Charles has also taken on a core role in designing a new climate-friendly garden at Sandringham, his Norfolk estate. With sustainable gardening and farming practices one of the monarch’s keen interests, it’s no surprise that his senior gardener has some must-do tips that will help elevate your garden for the summer months – in just five, simple jobs.
According to Jack Stooks – senior gardener at Highgrove – there are three main ingredients that go into creating a green space worthy of a royal: a bit of elbow grease, some patience, and some love. Jack, speaking on behalf of Betway, explained that this Bank Holiday weekend is the perfect opportunity to get your garden ready for summer and that there are five jobs you should consider kicking off with.
First things first, the royal gardener recommends that you give your beds and borders a good tidy up, and this includes weeding, pruning back dead plants, and improving your soil quality with a healthy layer of mulch. “If you haven’t already, cut back all your herbaceous perennial or dead plants from the winter. If there’s any weeds that are obvious, you can dig all those weeds out and cover the garden with a really thick mulch,” the expert explains.
“Mulch is often used prior to the winter in order to protect plants, however, If you haven’t done it, a really good mulch of the borders or some sort of feeding will need to be used ahead of spring.” Jack also recommends spending some time giving your rose bushes some TLC – if you are lucky enough to have some growing in your garden.
“Cut back your roses to where you want them to go from, take back the deceased and dying flowers, clear the borders out, then give them a manure feed using a well rotted-manure. If you’ve got really big rose beds, it’s definitely worth putting some well-rotted manure on them.”
The second job that Jack advises to get cracking with this spring is to give your garden furniture a good clean-up so it’s ready to enjoy as soon as the sunny weather approaches, and the expert adds “if you have a glass house, it’s worth getting the jet washer out to make sure the glass is clean and ready for early vegetables and select potatoes. If you’ve got the jet washer out, you could also do your paths, driveways, and even mental benches or chairs, anything that’s gotten slippery over the winter”.
Next up, the royal gardener recommends you get serious about composting if you have the space, which will allow you to get organised about any fruits and vegetables you hope to grow. “If you’ve got your own compost area, you might want to get that out and use it now, as well as any branches that need to be put through the shredder. After they’ve been put through the shredder, it’s a good time to start laying the branches on any borders or around bigger trees.
“Now is also a good time to make a start on early vegetables. Now that the weather is getting warm, you might want to go to your garden centre and see what tomatoes you like, or make a start on early onions and potatoes. It’s still slightly early, but once you’ve got everything organised, it will be about time to get those things in.”
If you are more interested in growing some beautiful blooms than your own food, this is also the perfect time to plant some flowers, Jack explains, because spring blooms have already arrived, giving you the opportunity to “see if there’s gaps you might want to start filling. This is also a good opportunity to rearrange plants to whenever you might want them positioned.”
Jack recommends that you head down to your local garden centre at this time of year to see the full range of blooms you could add to your garden, which he calls “the joy of the garden centres in the UK” explaining that “they provide and sell the plants that people are wanting as they’re coming up and coming into season,” and he also recommends keeping a good eye out for deals on tools or gardening equipment whilst you are there – as well as bird seed to encourage wildlife into your green space.
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