Guides · Garden year
Your garden in January
2 of the 32 species in our plant database ask something of you in January. 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 January 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.
January, plant by plant
| Plant | What January asks of it |
|---|---|
| Laurustinus (Viburnum tinus) | It is in flower. Cut a stem for the house and leave the rest alone. |
| Lenten rose (Helleborus × hybridus) | Cut every old leaf off at the base so the flowers are visible. |
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
- 01Walk the garden after hard frost and re-firm anything the ground has lifted.
What not to do
- 01Do not walk on frozen or waterlogged lawn: both leave marks that last all season.
- 02Do not prune anything that flowers on old wood. You are cutting off June.
Next month: February. 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.