The Big Cleanup

The days are getting longer. It’s about now that we notice the jungle round the house.

Where do I start? Well the first thing to do is get the mower going and tidy up the lawn. Bet you wish you had it serviced before throwing it in the back of the shed. I always think that mowing the grass is like hoovering the carpet it makes everything seem much tidier.

Then there are the flower beds, tidy up the edges and pull out any weeds and plants that have died. Any losses should be replaced by a completely different species. The reason being that if a plant was so unhappy in a particular spot or became diseased and died, a similar plant will probably do the same thing. The exception being strimmer attack. These machines are responsible for more plant fatalities than any other garden pest.

It should be looking pretty good by now.

Now is the time to stand back and look around to see how the garden can be improved. That’s probably all you can manage after all that tidying up.

I like to divide the garden up into compartments with small hedges. This way you can have a formal area that is kept really tidy. Then you can have an orchard or a vegetable patch that is less formal so does not need as much maintenance. I always think that a wildlife area next to a formal garden is a disaster, it looks like you got fed up half way down the garden and left it to go wild. But if you have a division between the two areas, the garden looks neat and the wildlife area can do its own thing. The added bonus is that you halve the amount of work which has to be good.

It’s about time to dig out the barbeque because I’m hoping for a good Summer this year. I hope you didn’t leave any old sausages on it when you put it away in the pouring rain last year.