This is the APRIL installment of Horticulture Week's month-by-month guide to essential maintenance and management tasks for parks, gardens and grounds maintenance staff.
Office
- Update pesticide records
- Update sowing records
- Prepare for extra mowing duties, organising seasonal workers or contractors if necessary
General
- Control slugs and snails
- Increase intensity of weed control
Trees, shrubs and hedges
- Inspect for wind damage
- Check ties and stakes and water newly planted trees and shrubs
- Plant conifer and broadleaved evergreen hedges
- Prune Sambucus and Cotinus
- Prune early-flowering shrubs such as Forsythia and Chaenomeles
Beds and borders
- Buy in bedding plugs
- Stake tall-growing plants
- Apply a chemical fertiliser if not already done
- Finish dividing and replanting summer-flowering subjects
- Plant dahlia tubers in south, wait until next month in the north
- Keep winter bedding neat a little longer
- Keep beds and borders tidy
- Trim winter-flowering heathers
- Cut back lavender
- Continue taking basal-stem cuttings
- Continue sowing hardy annuals outdoors
- Sow annual grasses
Wall plants
- Tie in new shoots and train climbing and rambling roses and Clematis
Bulbs
- Plant out summer flowerers
- Divide nerines
Containers
- Clean and prepare for summer displays
Greenhouses and conservatories
- Check for panes loosened by gales
- Ventilate
- Damp down on the hotter days
- Provide shade for young plants where necessary
- Check regularly for vine weevil
- Control aphids
Water features
- Inspect regularly for algae bloom and treat accordingly
*Jobs should only be undertaken when ground and weather conditions are suitable and will vary according to location and may vary significantly from year to year. And remember that while the year nicely divides into 12 months, activities often overlap.
