The May Gardening Jobs I’ve spotted in My Garden

May gardening jobs don’t really feel like jobs at all to me. I think that’s because this time of year is almost my favourite in the garden.

Everything is so full of energy. Certain plants are at full throttle. For instance, my bearded irises are in bloom at the front of the cottage. The full sun brings them on earlier than the ones in our back garden. Other plants are revving up to put on a summer show, with lush leaves and lovely plump buds promising so much.

As I tend to do or spot gardening jobs as I wander around the garden, for this post on May’s gardening jobs I thought I’d take us on a tour through some of the garden, talk through how things are looking and outline the task I spot as I wander around. As they may well be tasks you should consider too.

I’m going to do this in two parts – this week and next. First up is the front garden and the patio.

Container at the Front

As you walk down our driveway the first thing you are greeted by, apart from wheelie bins if we’ve forgotten to bring them in, is a lovely stone trough. Mr F-W bought this as a birthday present for me a few years ago. It’s in quite a semi-shaded spot and planted up with a mix of ferns, ivy, bleeding heart (dicentra) and geranium. (It’s rammed full of snowdrops in Jan – March).

The ivy and geranium tend to take over if I’m not careful. So as I walk past, I check this isn’t hapenning, lifting any bits if they’re getting too big for their boots. I may pop any removed geranium into somewhere else in the garden or maybe put them in a large container as I think pots with geraniums look fab.

The Dicentra is ‘Spectabilis Alba‘ – it’s a beauty but it’s a spring flowerer. Luckily the geranium will romp away flowering for ages and the fern always looks good. I can genuinely say that with minimal effort or skill on my part this container looks fab all year round.

Sadly the same cannot be said for the driveway itself. It needs regular weeding, which I do by hand. I don’t use any nasty sprays so it’s a bit of a chore. But with a good audiobook on the go, it’s actually quite pleasurable. I take particular trouble to weed thoroughly in May both the driveway and my beds and borders as this lessens the number of weeds setting seed, to give me trouble later on!

Front of the Cottage

Next you reach the front of our little cottage. At this time of year it’s a mad combination of the aforementioned irises together with wisteria and the climbing Rosa Zephirine Drouhin.

The rose is completely thornless and wonderfully fragranced. Two massive ticks in my book. However, it’s really prone to blackspot. And this year it is suffering badly. So while it looks like it’s in marvellous bloom in the picture, the flowers are rather undersized as the plant has lost a lot of leaves. So top of my May gardening jobs is to get more Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic. My lovely neighbour Desi who has fantastic roses, swears by it. She tells me I need to spray all my roses – not just this one – religiously every two weeks.

At the front of our cottage we also have agapanthus. As I walk past I can see seedlings from the plant have started growing. I want them, but not where they’re growing. So as with any other plants I spot popping up where I don’t want them, I’ll lift the agapanthus seedlings and bring them on in pots in a good mix of potting compost and gravel, as they like a free draining environment.

I’ll either grow them on and then put them in larger containers or I’ll give them to friends.

May Gardening Jobs – Patio Pots

Coming through our side gate you reach our patio. This area is just coming into its own. The camellias which provided much needed early interest, have pretty well finished flowering. May gardening jobs include feeding them, to restore all the energy they expended on those blooms.

Happily an azalea (above) which my friend Ginny gave me is still looking good (though past its thrilling best), and everything else is gearing up to take over.

My acers and ferns have unfurled their lovely leaves. In May I’ll remove old fern leaves to give the new ones more room.

The heucheras (below) which I took from mother plants last year have well and truly flourished and are romping away. This reminds me, as a job this week I must gently take more heuchera plantlets and put them into pots to increase my stock for next year.

My hostas are up, including my absolute favourite, the big fella, Sum and Substance (below).

As part of my May gardening jobs I routinely remove the flowers from most of my hostas, as I prefer their leaves and want the plants to concentrate their energy on producing them. I’ll also keep an eye out for slugs/snails who love to munch my hostas’ leaves.

As one of my last minute May gardening jobs, if they’re looking congested in their containers I may also quickly divide hostas now before the Summer starts. Otherwise I’ll leave it until the Autumn.

Lastly, the clematis, while not yet in flower, are looking lush and green as they climb their supports.

I’ll keep tying in the clematis regularly to their supports until they completely get the hang of things. I’ve also put out my sweet peas now in massive pots on the patio. They’ll need tying to their wigwams of canes for a while.

However, my priority job on the patio is to start feeding all my plants that are in pots. I put slow release granular feed into the pots when I refreshed the top inch of so of their compost. I did this back February at the same time as I pruned the clematis. But that granular feed will need supplementing soon. So to be on the safe side I’ll give most of my container plants a liquid feed with a tomato feed potentially every week from now on.

Patio Cracks

Aside from what’s in pots, lots of gorgeous little plants are also coming up through the cracks in the patio. This is completely planned by me. Earlier in the season we had Primulas and now we’ve got Erigeron, the lovely wafty Geranium Phaeum Album, early signs of Campanula Lactiflora Prichards Variety, Aquilegia, lovely mosses and even Astrantia Major Rubra.

These are all plants growing in the sunny bed which runs adjacent to our patio. But they have spread beautifully into the patio cracks too. For instance in the picture above you can see the astrantia in the border and in the cracks of the patio.

This has happend because when laying it, we deliberately didn’t put cement between the cracks but just a bit of small shingle. This means the patio is fantastic for drainage – important with all the wet weather we now get – but it’s also great for flowers.

I deliberately grow quite wild patio. I feel it’s much better for the wildlife, (we get oodles of birds and insects fluttering and buzzing around the space) which means it’s also better for us as we love all that stuff! Having a wild patio also means there’s less weeding of the cracks required.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have to weed the area as part of my May gardening jobs. I don’t want grass etc in the cracks. But as the flowers take over, the room for weeds diminishes. I get a more beautiful patio, the birds and insects get it too, and there’s less weeding. It’s a massive win win er …win.

May Gardening Jobs

So this wander down our drive and onto our patio highlights a number of May gardening jobs which may be applicable to you too:

• Keep an eye out for plants taking over others in mixed containers
• Feed roses with Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic every two weeks
• Feed containers weekly with liquid tomato feed
• Take cuttings or lift seedlings to create more plants
• Remove old leaves from ferns in pots to make room for the new
• Weed thoroughly – don’t use sprays
• Support climbers until they get going – especially clematis and sweet peas
• Quickly, do a last minute divide of any congested hostas in pots
• Remove flowers from hostas to encourage leaves
• Keep an eye out for hosta leaf loving slugs and snails

That’s it for now. See you next week when I’ll cover off the rest of the back garden…until then happy gardening x