September is a lovely month. The weather is usually rather good, the evenings haven’t drawn in too much and the children are, hopefully, back at school!

So what should you be getting up to in your garden this month? If the weather allows, you can get on with lifting and dividing any perennials that have become too congested and stopped flowering as well as they have been. This can be done in spring but by then things can get very busy, so it is one less job to do.

Lift the large clumps and, with a pair of garden forks back to back, prise them apart into smaller pieces. Discard the woody, congested centre of clumps, replanting pieces which look healthy and have a good root system, as well as new shoots, into compost enriched soil with some bone meal added.

These will give a good show the following summer. This can be done up until Christmas, depending on the weather. Leave grasses, silvery foliage plants and late-flowering plants until spring to sort out.

Ensure a good asparagus crop next year

Cut asparagus ferns to the ground and get rid of them, as they may be harbouring the eggs of the asparagus beetle, Crioceris asparagi. Apply a balanced feed such as blood, fish and bone meal over the soil surface to help ensure a good crop next year.

Buy sweet pea seeds ready for planting next month. I know I have a tendency to go on about things (or so my husband tells me!) but sweet peas are such a great thing to grow. They grow up a wigwam of sticks so don’t take up much space, and if you enrich the soil with some compost before planting in their final position, they will reward you with flowers all summer long to cut. In fact, you must cut them so that they keep flowering and you end up with bunches of the little scented jewels all over the house. Heaven!

A delicious range of unusual bulbs

September can be thought of as coming to the end of the year in the garden, but it is also time for planning and planting bulbs for the coming year. It is a good time to order bulbs from catalogues such as Avon Bulbs (www.avonbulbs.co.uk) who stock a delicious range of more unusual varieties and who constantly win gold at Chelsea for their amazing displays.

Tulips are best left until November to plant, but others such as narcissus and crocus can be put in towards the back end of September.