On the Threshold of Another Spring

As for the rest, the intermediate group of mid to slightly later flowering clematis, sticking to your honed gardening instincts works best here. Most of this group will already be only to willing to show you where to prune. Look along each shoot in turn and pick a pair of fat green buds. These are the ones that will flower and you need to make your cut just above this pair of buds. It's that simple.

If like me you leave your roses until spring to prune to avoid the worst of winter frost damage, they also can be tackled now. Most climbers should ideally have been pruned by now, but if you haven't got around to them yet, prune now before it's too late. Old-fashioned rose bush roses, like gallicas and other old roses, should be pruned for shape more than anything else. My method with these is simply to removed old, worn out wood and move on to prune the rest by about a third. That way, you should end up with a shapely bush with strong growth to sustain the flowering period later.

If you intend to mulch your borders and beds with some good organic material, any time now until the end of March is the best time. Leave it any later and plant growth will be too advanced to really see what you are doing. I try to feed all my plants each spring and usually this goes on the borders before applying any mulch, this method makes the nutrients more immediately available to plants than had it been applied on top of the mulch.

Whilst doing all this I must try and find time to enjoy all the early spring flowers. My camellias appear strongly budded, so I'm looking forward to a good show from most of them. One or two in pots however look less promising lacking some flower buds. Growing camellias in containers is a very successful method of growing these acid loving plants for many gardeners with alkaline soils or for those with hardly any garden at all.

Like most plants in pots, my containerised camellias now need either a larger pot or fresh ericaeous compost in the existing ones. Teasing out the little hardy cyclamen that grow on the gravelled surface of all these potted camellias should be fun!

The end of February marks the threshold of the hellebore season. My own plants have been

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