Guides · Garden year
Your garden in October
3 of the 32 species in our plant database ask something of you in October. 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 October 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.
October, plant by plant
| Plant | What October asks of it |
|---|---|
| Snowy mespilus (Amelanchier lamarckii) | Nothing to prune. Let the autumn colour do the work. |
| Purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea 'Transparent') | Leave it standing. This is the month it earns its place. |
| Garden mint (Mentha spicata) | Cut it to the ground and mulch the crown. |
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
- 01Rake the gravel, clear leaves off the terrace before they stain it.
What not to do
- 01Do not leave leaves on the lawn for weeks: it kills the grass beneath in patches.
- 02Do not cut evergreens hard now. They will not regrow before winter.
Next month: November. 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.