Gardening Tips and Advice Week 3

Throughout lockdown it's important to get outdoors, and keep the mind occupied, a great way to combine the two is by doing some gardening.

This week Horticulture lecturer Joanna Loane has provided us with some helpful advice on seasonal displays.

Pots are a great way to display plants that are in season, they are easily moved, so can be changed around to create interest in prominent places in the garden or at your front door for example. It can be quite time consuming and costly to repot plants continuously throughout the year, but here is a handy tip to interchange plants easily and effectively; Keep a small range of decorative pots, and instead of potting the plants into them, just set the pots into them in their plastic pots.

If the height needs adjusted, use an upturned plant saucer or lid of a coffee jar under the plastic pot to lift it up inside the decorative pot (make sure there is a drainage hole in the base of the decorative pot!). When the plants are fading or out of season, just lift out and store it in an area out of the way in the garden.

The decorative pot can then be used for another plant. This also means that you do not need to buy a large number of decorative pots that can be quite costly. In these images, Hellebores add cheerful white flowers to the displays, and Sarcococca (Sweet Box) adds a lovely scent, particularly welcome at this time of year! In a few weeks, these will be changed for spring bulbs such as Daffodils.