In truth, August’s one of the quieter months in the garden. You’ll hopefully be on top of the weeds, so aside from the daily watering regime and a fair amount of feeding, deadheading and pruning, it’s a great month for putting your feet up and enjoying your surrounds. Many of us also choose to holiday this month so give your plot some thought and attention before you go.

July is surely the month of the year when it’s time to sit back now and then and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Remember those dark winter nights when you hankered for those long hot days in the garden, roses and delphiniums billowing in the warm breeze, evocative scents catching your nostrils as you walk barefoot over crisply cut lawns, everything around you just teeming with life? Well, they’re here, and let’s be thankful for it!

May’s a marvellous month in so many ways. The frosts have all but gone, the sun radiates its warmth, evenings allow us time to potter in the garden after work and bare white skin might even see the light of day! On a personal note, it’s the start of the cricket season and my birthday’s here. Life is rather good.

In the greenhouse, seedlings and baby plants are growing away strongly just itching to get outside, whilst tender plants and exotics are gradually being acclimatised for the summer ahead.

In particular it’s a busy time in the vegetable garden. Elsewhere, it’s mostly about tweaking this and that, getting everything into place for what should hopefully be a riot of colour, scent and plentiful harvests over the coming months.

Try and get as much done now as you can before attention turns to the routine tasks of weeding, mowing and watering later on. Oh, and maybe sit back once in a while to admire all that handiwork!

April in the garden has to be the busiest month bar none. I like it most for the diversity of jobs that it brings, be it sowing seed, potting up, planting out, pruning, or simply just mowing the lawn. The weather tends to be a right old mixture too. Chilly starts, torrential downpours, or those afternoons with just a T-shirt on your back, it’s all there. With the warmer sunshine comes the full spring experience – lush green growth, the hum of distant lawnmowers, blossom seemingly everywhere, and the oh so vibrant colours of beds and borders. Everything’s properly bursting into life. As much as anything it’s a time of hope and expectation. Amidst all the to-ings and fro-ings, just make sure you take the time to take it all in – I’m like a child on Christmas eve me!

For me, the overriding feeling in March is one of  ‘almost there’. The frosty mornings and biting winds are still very much a part of being out in the garden but the longer days and milder spells, allied with the garden as a whole awakening from it’s deep slumber, makes it such an exciting month. Whilst anything that blooms in January and February is generally revered, almost as if it’s a lone beacon of hope, it feels like everything in the garden in March is about to burst and just raring to go.

For me, February in the garden’s invariably about getting all those unfinished jobs ticked off and the loose ends tied up. As all gardeners know, the months of March and April see so much to be done, blink and they’re but a dim and distant memory! Year after year, spring seems to be upon us before we really know it, so try to get out there when the weather allows and get ahead of the game.

If the truth be told, January can be just about as bleak and miserable as it gets out in the garden and it’s a time of year when even the hardiest amongst us don’t always relish the thought of being outdoors for any length of time.

December is the start of winter proper, that time of year when the garden’s stripped to its bare bones. It’s therefore the ideal time to look at the garden as a whole and plan both major changes and minor tweaks for the year to come.