Seasonal garden maintenance in Horne

Each season’s jobs done when Horne’s clay and weather actually allow them.

On Horne’s clay, the seasons don’t always arrive when the calendar says. Seasonal garden maintenance in Horne means waiting for the ground in spring, keeping up through a fast summer, clearing a heavy leaf fall in autumn and saving the structural work for winter. We plan the year around what the soil and plants are doing.

You can book seasonal jobs one at a time, or have them built into regular visits at no extra charge. If you only want help at the turning points of the year, a spring wake-up and an autumn clear-down are the two visits we’d suggest.

Leaf clearance in a garden ringed by trees

Horne gardens that border woods, shaws or hedgerows with mature oaks get a lot of leaves, and oak drops late, often into December. Left on a lawn, they block out light and hold moisture against the grass, and on clay that’s a quick route to moss and bare patches. In a dry autumn they blow into every corner of the beds. In a wet one they lie flat on the grass in a soggy mat.

We clear lawns, paths and borders through autumn and keep returning until the trees are bare. Leaves come off gravel and out of the base of hedges as well. Everything is taken away.

Seasonal garden maintenance: an autumn tidy up before the ground turns

October is the last good window before Horne ground gets too wet to work. That’s when we cut back the perennials that have finished, give the lawn its last cut and edge, lift tender plants, and plant bulbs. Main hedge cuts and reductions start in September and carry on through the winter. We also raise the mower for the last cut, so the grass goes into winter with a bit of cover.

Winter jobs are rose pruning, renovation of overgrown shrubs and spreading mulch on borders. Spring is cutting back grasses, the first high cut and getting ahead of the weeds before they seed.