FLOWER GARDEN

• Buy and plant container grown herbaceous plants, shrubs and climbers
• Sow hardy annuals such as sunflower, candytuft, marigold and love-in-the-mist in the open ground
• At the end of the month, prune dogwoods and willows grown for their bark
• Cut back winter heathers after flowering using shears
• Prune plants where you want big leaves, such as eucalyptus and Indian bean tree (catalpa)
• Lift and split overcrowded clumps of snowdrop
• Plant the sweet pea seedlings you sowed earlier in the greenhouse
• Spike the lawn to improve aeration and drainage
• Repair lawn edges

CONTAINER GARDENING

• Keep dead-heading your winter pansies
• Grow patio roses in pots for a long season of flowering. Flower Carpet varieties are good, and 'Irish Eyes' was Rose of the Year for 2000
• Repot house plants Repot half-hardy fuchsias
• Start liquid feeding shrubs in pots every two weeks

KITCHEN GARDEN

• Cover wet soil with cloches for two or three weeks before sowing or planting
• Chit maincrop potatoes
• Sow hardy veg such as peas,lettuce and radish. For small gardens, try mini varieties
• Grow parsley from seed - boiling water poured along the drill first warms up the soil and enhances germination
• Sow other herbs; salad rocket is very easy to grow
• In warm areas, plant early potatoes

GREENHOUSE

• Plant begonia tubers
• In heated greenhouses sow tender vegetables - aubergine, indoor tomatoes, chillies and peppers
• Sow bedding plants such as nicotiana, antirrhinum and salvia
• Pot up overwintered geranium cuttings
• Take cuttings from new growth of herbaceous plants such as delphinium, lupin and aster

Feed and mulch
Weed your borders, gently forking over the soil and working in a balanced fertiliser such as Osmocote, Vitax Q4 or Growmore. Then top-dress with garden compost or a proprietary mulch product from a garden centre. This will set up your herbaceous plants, trees, shrubs and fruit for the whole season.

NOW'S THE TIME

• LIFT OVERCROWDED HERBACEOUS PLANTS
  Split Michaelmas daisies, sedums, day lilies and hostas into smaller pieces and replant in groups of three or five.
  Flowering vigour will be restored.
• GET RID OF MOSS
  If you want a better lawn, apply moss killer.
  Two weeks later, rake out the dead patches and feed.
  If time is short, use a combined fertiliser/moss killer.
• BUY PLUG PLANTS OR SEEDLINGS
  Grow them on in a greenhouse for summer containers - and save a lot of money.
• PRUNE BUSH ROSES
  Cut back to an outward-facing bud.
  Remove dead or crossed stems.
• WATCH OUT FOR SLUGS
  Particularly on bulb flowers.
  Aluminium sulphate is less risky to wildlife and pets than slug pellets.