April's here, and the garden's awakening! Spring's vibrant arrival makes it the ideal moment to dive in and prepare your outdoor space for a flourishing year. We've put together our 15 favourite gardening tips for April to get you started.
15 gardening tips for April
- Weed and enrich vegetable beds with compost or manure for better soil structure, moisture, and drainage before planting.
- As roses, shrubs, and trees begin their spring growth, distribute a slow-release, all-purpose fertiliser around their base. Rake in the amendment, and mulch with well-rotted manure or compost.
- With lawns now showing signs of growth, stimulate them with a high-nitrogen feed. Address soil compaction by aerating with a garden fork or hollow-tine aerator. Additionally, April provides favourable conditions for establishing new lawns through seeding or turfing.
- Guide the growth of honeysuckle, climbing roses and clematis by tying in stray long shoots. To promote prolific flowering in climbing roses, train the shoots to grow nearly horizontally.
- Support tall perennials like asters, sanguisorba, and verbena early to ensure upright growth. Installing supports now is far more effective than trying to manage them once the plants have become large and unruly.
- Improve border health by dividing overcrowded daylilies and hostas. Fill in any resulting gaps with fresh perennials and shrubs.
- Wait until after the frosts have ceased, then prune penstemons. Look for new growth at the base and cut above it, or, if none is present, cut above the lowest new shoots on the stems.
- Prune forsythia and Japanese quince (Chaenomeles) immediately following their spring flowering.
- Encourage vivid winter color in shrubby dogwoods (Cornus sibirica, C. sanguinea, and C. alba) by hard pruning them now.
- Prune lavender for shape, avoiding cuts into the plant's old wood. Once pruned, here are some uses for the dried lavender.
- To promote bushy growth in fuchsia and sweet pea seedlings, pinch out their growing tips.
- To care for daffodils and tulips after they flower, deadhead them and allow the foliage to naturally break down.
- To prevent weeds, hoe or hand fork beds regularly, removing them as they sprout.
- Sow hardy annuals such as poppies, cornflowers, and nigella outdoors, and in the vegetable garden, sow broad beans, carrots, beetroot, and parsnips.
- Sow cucumbers, tomatoes, courgettes, pumpkins, French beans, runner beans, nasturtiums, dahlias and sunflowers indoors.
Ready to make your garden shine? Explore our wide selection of seeds, plants, tools, and pots at our St Albans garden centre this spring.
