Take the time this month to do a bit of garden visiting – the national garden schemes are a wonderful day out, particularly when a whole village takes part. It is lovely to saunter around someone else’s garden and get ideas on planting partners and hopefully a lovely bit of homemade cake! Check out www.ngs.org.uk to see where is available in your local area.

The equivalent of a quick polish around the house
With this in mind, I was thinking about the people who open their gardens to the public for this event and the hours they must put in to make everything look so good. I don’t really do much garden maintenance any more apart from in my overgrown jungle where, to be honest, you don’t get to see many weeds, as there is so much planting they have to fight to survive! However, if I had 20 minutes to do something to tidy up a garden before visitors arrived what would be the tasks to do?

I would plump for weeding the front 10cm of the border, leaving bare earth, cutting the grass and trimming the edges. Obviously some of you have more garden than me and this would take an hour or two, but it is the equivalent of a quick vacuum up and spraying polish around the house. It really looks more than the time it takes and you can ignore the back of the border, especially at this time of year when it is probably full to bursting with luxurious growth. That is, of course, unless you have the time and enjoy spending hours in the garden!

Harvest herbs and store them in jars for the winter
In the herb garden, cut back the leggy stems of mint and pinch out the tips of basil, lemon balm and oregano to encourage bushy new growth. You can harvest rosemary, lavender, oregano, etc. and hang them in bunches upside-down in a room with plenty of air movement. When dried they can be stored in jars for the winter.

Nip out the side-shoots from cordon-trained tomato plants regularly. To increase your strawberry plants, peg down the runners that they produce using a bit of bent wire, or a stone to hold them in place. When they have rooted you can sever the stem attaching to the parent plant and replant. Remove unwanted runners to maintain the vigour of the parent plant.

Give Wisteria a summer pruning by cutting back the long, green whippy shoots, leaving four or five leaves on each stem.