So Christmas is at your place this year and your garden isn’t up to Aunt Dee’s standards?
Don’t worry it’s never too late to start!
Here’s my Quick Guide to Getting your Garden Party Ready!
Get rid of rubbish
Do a General Clean up
Tidy your lawn
Even if your lawn is patchy and weed infested a quick zip around with the mower and whipper snipper can make it look like a green bowling green! I find in this weather mowing regularly with a catcher on can help keep your lawn tidy and lush. If you need more information on keeping a healthy lawn check out my LAWN BLOG
Tidy up your plants and garden
As soon as you can, take a wander around the yard and trim anything that looks ‘yuk’.
If you have formal hedges or climbers give them a light trim to neaten them up. Now is not the time to give everything a heavy handed trim, save that for after the parties!
Remove dead flowers and yellow leaves. If a plant looks really bad, maybe now is time to make the big decision to pull it out. Economic threshold for plants is a real thing!
All those pots with half dead annuals, it’s time to get rid of them. If you don’t have anything to replant in them, empty the old soil out into your garden and store empty pots neatly out of sight. If a potted plant looks unhealthy but you want to keep it, move it out of eyesight, and give it a feed with Organic Link and Triple Boost!
Fertilising, composting and mulching would go a long way in helping your gardens look bloomin’ lovely for Christmas Day. Mulch covers up a multitude of sins in the garden and empty spaces always seem full after mulching. Sugar Cane and my favourite, one inch Hoop Bark, are great choices. Both are great for the soil and mulching helps keeps plants moist and weed growth is slowed, which is very helpful in this weather.
Add Colour
Unless you’ve been planning this for months, there really isn’t any time to be planting seedlings. Plus it’s just too wet and humid to be planting out plants with small root systems. Forever plants full of flowers are the way to go.
If you’ve got spaces in the garden, a way to fill them up quickly is with a nice decorative pot full of flowers.
To make it a little easier on you Trevallan has ready made pots and hanging baskets that are already overflowing with flowers.
While you may not feel like gardening is in your skill set, there are many plants that want to show off their skills at this time of year! If you come into Trevallan you’ll be surprised with all the colour available.
Pentas, Celosia, Angeloina, Hibiscus, Begonias, Buddleja, Gardenias, Crepe Myrtles, Ixoras, Anthuriums, Gauras...
If you are a little overwhelmed with choices, try using a colour theme to really make a statement. Either use all same coloured pots and different plants or chose similar coloured flowers like all reds and whites.
Never one to miss an opportunity to buy more plants and pots, even my table decorations are living plants! I love caladiums as they have brilliant red and green foliage and the popular red poinsettia always looks good.
The day before your party, do a last-minute clean-up (trim dead flowers). Make sure all the plants are watered. The last thing you want to be doing on the Party morning is running around watering wilting plants before guests arrive.
Enjoy partying in style and showing off your amazing gardening skills!