•Weed little and often – walk around the garden on a fine evening (glass of wine in hand if you want to) and spend 5 minutes pulling out weed seedlings. These can be left on the surface of the soil to rot down naturally, but be careful that they haven’t got a big ball of soil attached or they will just re-root where you leave them.

•If you have that pernicious thug ‘Bindweed’ in your garden, you will despair of pulling out yards of the stuff only for it to grow back bigger and stronger. A top tip is to unravel as much of it as you can, careful not to break it, and stuff it into a plastic bag – spray with a ‘Glyphosate’ type weedkiller and seal the bag with a wire twist tie. Stuff the bag underneath the surrounding plants and forget about it – it will soon die back right to the roots and will not trouble you again.

•Make sure that any Camellias, Rhododendrons and Azaleas that you have in pots don’t go short of water. They will be forming their flower buds for next years stunning display now so will not appreciate drying out. Always use rainwater if you can, as these plants hate the lime in our tap water – one more good reason to install a water-butt.

•If you have a small garden and have run out of space, consider going up! A pergola, archway or small wooden obelisk is the perfect way to give you more planting space, and creating that extra dimension, be it a permanent structure for a vine or a temporary bundle of bamboo canes for fragrant sweet peas.

•Keep your lawn greener – for longer! Grass is a plant too and needs feeding to keep it in tip top condition. A summer lawn feed, high in nitrogen, will green it up no-end and make it stronger to resist drought later on. Apply this when the ground is moist or if rain is forecast to pep up your lawn. Don’t go too mad on the cutting either – a shaved lawn = a brown lawn. A good tip is to raise the cutting height on your mower and concentrate on keeping the edges neat – you will not notice the longer length of the grass.

Have a great summer in your garden...
Sharon