Use plants for backyard privacy

Get your potted plants from around the garden to create a living screen. Experiment with tall varieties, such as ornamental grasses, and flowering plants, such as bacopa and begonia. You’ll be rewarded with privacy, shelter from wind, and the beautiful aroma of blooms and foliage around you.

Make your flowers last longer

Watering and weeding is a given, but you may not know just how important deadheading is to keep your flowers blooming. Serious gardeners, will always deadhead which means removing the dead or faded flowers from the plant, this encourages most perennials and annuals to grow much fuller and flower for longer.

Here’s how to do it:

Removing the flower

Most plants have spent flowers or new buds or leaves on the same stem, these plants will be delphinium, daisy, certain rose trees etc.

Use your pruners to cut off dead flower stems above the first new flower or bud. If there is no bud then snip just above the highest leaf.

Removing the stem

This is best when you have a single flower stem, e.g bleeding heart, peony etc.

When all their flowering is finished, make sure to cut the stalk off as close to the ground as possible. If you want to thin the regrowth of wider growing plants then carefully pull out the stems by the root.