What garden jobs should I do each season?

Garden calendars can be overwhelming because they list everything anyone could do. This is the reduced version: the jobs that matter in an ordinary garden, arranged by when they need doing, with the ones that can wait marked as such. Timings assume a temperate northern-hemisphere climate.

Step by step

1. Spring: sow seeds indoors from late winter, and outdoors once the soil warms.Soil temperature matters more than the calendar. If it's cold and wet, waiting two weeks costs nothing.
2. Spring: feed beds and lawns, and start mowing as growth picks up.High-nitrogen lawn feed in spring, and start mowing high.
3. Spring: plant out tender crops only after the last frost.Late May in most of the UK. Hardening off first is not optional.
4. Summer: water deeply and less often, in the morning or evening.Deep infrequent watering encourages deep roots. Frequent sprinkling encourages shallow ones.
5. Summer: deadhead flowers and harvest crops regularly.Both signal the plant to keep producing rather than setting seed and stopping.
6. Autumn: plant spring bulbs, and plant trees and shrubs while the soil is warm.Autumn planting lets roots establish before the top growth starts in spring. It's the best planting season for most woody plants.
7. Autumn: mulch, scarify the lawn, and tidy selectively.See the winter preparation guide — some mess is deliberately valuable.
8. Winter: prune dormant deciduous trees and shrubs, and repair structures.Not all shrubs are pruned in winter — spring-flowering ones flower on old wood and should be pruned after flowering.
9. Winter: plan, order seeds, and maintain tools.The most productive winter gardening happens indoors.

Tips

• Keep a simple garden diary. What you sowed, when, and how it did is far more useful than any general calendar after a couple of years.
• Soil temperature, not the date, decides when seeds germinate. A cheap soil thermometer removes a lot of guesswork.
• If you're behind, prioritise watering and weeding over everything else in summer, and mulching over everything else in autumn.
• Local timings vary considerably. A garden in the south of England runs several weeks ahead of one in the north of Scotland.

Common mistakes

• Sowing too early — Cold wet soil rots seed and produces weak seedlings. Two weeks' patience often overtakes an early sowing.
• Pruning spring-flowering shrubs in winter — They flower on last year's wood — you'd be cutting off this year's flowers. Prune those just after flowering.
• Watering little and often in summer — Encourages shallow roots that suffer badly in a dry spell.
• Trying to do everything — The list is infinite. Watering, weeding and mulching cover most of the value.

Questions people ask