Guides · Garden year
Your garden in February
5 of the 32 species in our plant database ask something of you in February. 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 February 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.
February, plant by plant
| Plant | What February asks of it |
|---|---|
| Field maple (Acer campestre) | Prune the field maple while it is bare: dead, damaged, crossing. |
| Purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea 'Transparent') | Cut the molinia to the ground before the new shoots show. |
| Wood sage (Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna') | Clear last year's stems and top-dress with 2 cm of compost. |
| Lenten rose (Helleborus × hybridus) | It is in flower. Do nothing. |
| Autumn raspberry (Rubus idaeus 'Zeva') | Cut every cane to the ground. All of it. It fruits on new growth. |
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
- 01Order what is missing while nurseries still have bare-root stock.
What not to do
- 01Do not dig wet clay. Wait until it crumbles rather than smears.
- 02Do not cut grasses back before the worst frost has passed: the old stems protect the crown.
Next month: March. 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.