Guides · Garden year
Your garden in August
3 of the 32 species in our plant database ask something of you in August. Everything else in the garden can be left alone, which is half of what a calendar is for.
Most monthly garden advice is written for nobody's garden. It says "prune shrubs" in a month when pruning half of them costs you next year's flowers. What follows is the August row of our own Garden year: each job attached to the plant that asks for it, from the same database the Dossier is built from.
August, plant by plant
| Plant | What August asks of it |
|---|---|
| Lavender (Lavandula × intermedia 'Grosso') | Cut the spent flower stems; the plant should end the summer domed. |
| Panicled hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight') | Water deeply once a week in drought: the leaves flag before the roots do. |
| Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) | One clip a year, late August, on all three faces. |
Every job here comes from that species' own entry in our database — the same rows that build the Garden year in a Dossier.
The whole-garden job
- 01Take cuttings of anything you would be sorry to lose.
What not to do
- 01Do not panic at brown lawn. It recovers in September without help.
- 02Do not fertilise: you are pushing soft growth into autumn frost.
Next month: September. A Dossier includes all twelve rows, written on your plants — and on the first of each month we email you that month's three jobs.