Video: Gardening Tips and Advice Week 4

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

This week Horticulture lecturer Joanna Loane has given us some helpful advice on how to get more plants in our gardens for free! 

This time of the year is ideal for cutting back and pruning many deciduous shrubs; they are still dormant, and the birds have not quite started nesting - a bird’s nest in your shrubs will definitely delay pruning! Remember though, don’t cut back anything with buds on, such as Magnolias or Camelias. Although this will not necessarily harm the shrub, you will be cutting off the flowers. These shrubs can be left until just after they have flowered. 

At the moment, it is difficult for gardeners to buy the range of plants we are used to, many garden centres are closed due to the lockdown, and in addition, import restrictions mean that fewer suppliers are selling online to Northern Ireland. The good news is that here are many ways in which we can propagate the plants that we already have in our gardens to create new plants, depending on the time of year. In this video I am demonstrating how to use some pruned plant material for hardwood cuttings, a technique that can be used during the winter and early spring.  

So, creating new plants from the ones we already have in our garden is a great way to increase what we have, it does not cost anything, you can swap plants with friends and neighbours, and there is a huge sense of achievement in creating a baby plant!