Gardening in March
March is a good time of year to do a final tidy-up and get ready for summer. If you give all your beds a good weed now, you’ll have less weeding to do later in the season. The best way to keep on top of weeds is to always try and pull them out when they are small and before they flower. You might need to give your grass a first cut, and if so, use a high setting on your mower. If you haven’t pruned your roses (include link) yet, do that now, and it’s a good time to prune and tidy up buddleias, the butterfly favourite.
Bedding Plants
Spring is in the air, time to add colour to your garden now with bedding plants, choose from a selection of Irish grown pansies, primulas/primroses, carnations, bellis and Ivy/hedera. They will instantly brighten up your garden in beds or pots.
Pot of the Month
This month’s combination is a cordyline, some carnations, bellis, and ivy. A cordlyine is an evergreen plant, available in different colours which will look good all year round. This gives your pot height. Combine it with bellis which is in the daisy family, and add in some carnations for a burst of colour. Finally, include ivy so that you have something trailing down the pot. Later in the season the bellis and carnations will die back, and you can replace them with more seasonal bedding plants so your pot looks good all year round
Perennials and Shrubs
Now that summer is around the corner there is a good selection of perennials to plant. Here are some Irish grown plants that you can plant now.
- Iberis (candytuft)
- Alium Spring Heathers
- Hebe Rhodanthemum Echinops Delphimium Digitalis (foxglove).
Heathers are a great addition to your garden, they are easy to look after and bees love them. Hebes are a reliable plant that will look good all year round. There are several hebes that have been bred in Ireland, so support local and plant a hebe!
Fruit and Vegetables
Get some early potatoes in, and plant some tomato seeds indoors. It’s also a good time to plant out cauliflower seedlings. You might think about putting in a blackberry bush. They start quite slowly, but by the second year they reach up to 2m with a spread of about 1m, and they’ll be covered with delicious fruit in autumn.