Protecting beds and borders
Last weekend I finally went through my beds and borders, cutting back dormant perennials and raking up leaves that should have been got in autumn.
I covered these borders around 18 months ago, with a protective mulch of bark chippings. On clearing the leaves, I was surprised by the lack of chippings underneath them. I can only assume some had broken down into the soil and the rest taken down by worms or picked up by birds.
So, faced with bare soil around dormant plant crowns, off I went to the garden centre to pick up a carload of Westland Plant Protection Bark.
After apply a topdressing of Growmore balanced fertiliser, I laid the bark, around 5cm deep over the soil and not quite so deep over the plant crowns, so that new spring shoots won’t struggle to rise.
Plant Protection Bark offers four benefits; slug and snail prevention, weed suppression, moisture retention, and perhaps most important at this time of year, protection against frost. Now that the crowns of early performers such as my peonies are covered with the bark chippings, frosty snaps over the next month (the Met Office is forecasting a cold February) should do little harm to the buds that I notice are already showing themselves.
About Kris Collins
Kris Collins started out in gardening as an estates worker at Richmond Park, west London, before training as a Royal Parks apprentice at Greenwich Park (south east london). After a stint as greenkeeper at The London Golf Club, Kent, he made a move towards journalism as a reporter for Horticulture Week. He now writes for Amateur Gardening magazine, Britain's best selling weekly gardening magazine, and tends his own garden in a leafy part of Hampshire.
