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May in the garden
May in the garden
Ali Barwani celebrates the arrival of warmer weather this month, reflecting on the dazzling early summer flowers appearing in our gardens. He also looks at ten jobs for May to get you started with some hands-on gardening.
May is the month when spring starts to think about moving into summer. There are no immutable lines in nature, gardening seasons aren’t as tidy as their calendar counterparts. Already tulips are looking over-blown, their fleshy petals dropping off. Cherry blossom is falling, with pavements and roads beneath the trees accumulating drifts of pink and white petals that quickly damage, showing brown bruising.
After a week of sunshine, last week the rain returned, and the grass has shot up. Mowing the lawn will be a weekly task from now until autumn if you want to maintain a neat sward. For those who favour a more relaxed garden then ‘No Mow May’ is the way to go. This is your opportunity to liberate your lawn and allow wildflowers to emerge and provide a feast of nectar and pollen for bees and other pollinators.
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/campaigns/nomowmay/
Take time to observe at the trees around you: in the street and in parks as well as gardens. Oak, ash, and beech are in leaf. Their fresh foliage will soon mature and lose its bright, sappy softness. Horse chestnut trees are flamboyantly festooned with white candles crowded with blossom.
If you are looking for a large shrub or small tree to give you a stunning spring display of pale flowers in May then consider the flowering dogwoods, Cornus florida and Cornus kousa.
- Cornus florida is in flower now and has large white flowers. Pink and red flowered cultivars are also available. C. kousa produces its white flowers a little later in the month and is a more erect plant. C. kousa is also better at coping with dry summers.
May is the month for rhododendrons. The rhododendrons in our shrub area are full of colour and glory. Plant them in ericaceous compost and treat them to an ericaceous feed to keep them at their magnificent best.
May is all about bursting buds of blue, mauve, and purple with bluebells, iris and lilacs leading the charge. I have a great fondness for Anchusa azurea ‘Loddon Blue’. This perennial bugloss carries flowers of deepest azure, I don’t know a more intense blue.
Sweet-scented lily-of-valley (Convallaria majalis) has a reputation for aggressive invasion, but it can easily be kept in check by judicious removal of any plants that have spread too far. I am writing all about lily-of the-valley for an upcoming blog, so perhaps I will finish here by saying I wouldn’t be without their highly perfumed white bells.
Early summer flowering climbers are starting to make their appearance, including the classic trailing racemes of sweetly scented Wisteria and the reliable and popular Clematis montana. The large-flowered Clematis ‘Nelly Moser’ is one of the first of the large-flowered hybrids to come into bloom.
10 Gardening jobs for May.
- Prune late winter and early spring blooming shrubs after they have finished flowering, such as Forsythia and Viburnum tinus.
- Tie in the new shoots of vigorous climbing plants, such as Clematis, honeysuckle, and Wisteria.
- Apply liquid plant food to your flowering spring bulbs to build them up to flower again next year. Do not be tempted to cut-back or tie up the green leaves.
- Keep deadheading your spring bedding plants, including pansies and violas to keep them flowering until it is time to replace them with summer bedding plants.
- Earth up potato plants, that means covering the shoots with soil as they appear.
- Watch out for pests and diseases. Slugs and snails become active in warm and wet weather. Inspect lilies and fritillaries for the scarlet lily beetle and its messy looking larvae. Check shoot tips and young foliage for aphids.
https://www.capitalgardens.co.uk/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-aphids/
- Select your summer bedding plants, the widest choice is now! Tender bedding may need protection if temperatures drop at night until all risk of frost is finally over. Like tender bedding plants, tomatoes and courgettes also need a period of hardening off before they are ready to be planted out.
- Start feeding your houseplants with a liquid fertilizer each fortnight until the autumn.
- Put supports in place for tall clump forming perennials such as Rudbeckia lanciniata and delphiniums.
- Use a hoe to remove weeds before they have time to grow and set seed.
In conclusion.
May is a busy month for the gardener. There are lots of jobs to be done as the weather warms up. Some tasks such as mowing the lawn and weeding flowerbeds need to become part of your weekly routine if you want to keep on top of them. May is the time to think about purchasing annual bedding plants and vegetables because they will soon need to be planted out. Although there are plenty of jobs to be done in the garden in May, at least it is pleasurable working in the garden when the weather is fine!
Finally, the end of May brings the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023. Every gardener’s favourite leisure activity is watching the coverage on television. RHS Chelsea helps us keep tabs on the latest trends in garden design and the new plants available to gardeners. So be sure to enjoy it!
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show-2023
