Guides · Garden year
Your garden in June
6 of the 32 species in our plant database ask something of you in June. 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 June 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.
June, plant by plant
| Plant | What June asks of it |
|---|---|
| Snowy mespilus (Amelanchier lamarckii) | Pick the amelanchier berries before the blackbirds finish them. |
| Rock rose (Cistus × purpureus) | Deadhead lightly. Never cut a cistus into old wood: it will not reshoot. |
| Japanese holly (Ilex crenata 'Dark Green') | First clip of the year, in dull weather so the cut leaves do not scorch. |
| Wood sage (Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna') | Cut the whole plant back by half the moment the spikes brown. |
| Mediterranean spurge (Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii) | Cut the flowered stems out at the base, in gloves. |
| Silverberry (Elaeagnus × ebbingei) | Clip once now and once in September if you want it tight. |
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
- 01Water new planting deeply once a week rather than lightly every day.
What not to do
- 01Do not water lightly every evening. Shallow roots in June mean a dead plant in August.
- 02Do not clip a hedge with nesting birds in it.
Next month: July. 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.