The growing season may be coming to an end, but October is still a great time of year to get planting in the garden.

Even though the soil is still warm plants are beginning to consider dormancy, and October is a really good time of year to lift and divide any perennials in your garden that have either become too cramped or may look better repeated throughout a border.

A cost-effective way to add plants to your garden

October is also the start of the bare-root planting season. Buying bare-root fruit trees, hedging plants and soft fruit shrubs like raspberries and gooseberries is a much more cost-effective way to add plants to your garden. They can be planted straight into the soil now, giving them time to settle in before the growing season starts again next year. If you haven’t already, it is also not too late to plant all of those spring bulbs.

With late summer displays perhaps fading a little, there are plenty of plants to consider adding that will bring a much-needed splash of colour at this time of year. Bright pink nerines flower throughout autumn and do well in a sunny spot. Michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemums and Japanese anemone all flower well now too and are a great addition to any border, while cyclamen are great when planted en masse beneath trees or across grass banks.

A great source of late nectar for bees

All of these flowering plants, while not only looking fabulous, are a great late source of nectar for those bees and butterflies still flying around.

Where a little untidiness is allowable, it is really worth considering sheathing those shears, laying down that rake and resisting that urge to tidy up the garden too much. Most animals that may call your garden home have already started hunting out suitable places to hibernate or shelter throughout the coming winter.

Mounds of fallen leaves, log piles, rotting branches, dead-standing perennial growth and compost heaps may be of refuge to bees, hedgehogs, bugs, frogs, newts and toads. If you can bear it, these garden critters need you to do less now, so they can return to delight you next year.

Prune climbing roses to encourage new growth

Another job that is good to do this month is pruning the climbing roses. They will flower on next year’s new growth so you can prune them quite hard now. I like to think of climbing roses as having a framework of spaced horizontal to upward diagonal structures that I prune back to every year. There’s no point in trying to tie in and save all of the new growth it’s put on in the past year. Instead, prune it back to that existing skeleton. This way you’ll get more new growth and that means more flowers.