Gardening in September when you live in the UK can be a busy month, with time spent caring for current displays as well as preparing for glorious Autumn colour and getting bulbs and spring flowering biennials ready for next year. Follow our suggestions to help you make best use of your gardening in September and be rewarded with a garden to be proud of.
Gardening In September - What To Do In The Garden In September
Take Time To Care For Your Plants Flowering Now
Spend the time to take care of your hanging baskets, tubs and containers now - together with your border plants - and this will encourage them to flower for longer and keep your gardening looking lush - especially when the weather is favouring us too!
It's just simple things which you need to keep doing . . . deadheading plants such as dahlias, delphiniums, roses etc. with a sharp pair of snips will encourage them to prolong their display.
Make sure your plants are receiving sufficient water - especially those in restricted amounts of compost, so tubs and baskets. When the weather is hot, to ensure water is not wasted through evaporation and to avoid leaves from being scorched, ideally water the soil and not the plants and water either in the evening or early morning when it should be cooler. This type of watering is often easier if you set up an automatic watering system, such as the Gardena Drip System which can be controlled by a water timer. Or you could opt for manual watering by purchasing one of our garden hose pipes.
Gardening In September - Divide For Free Plants And The Perfect Gift
Throughout September and October you can start to divide up clumps of perennials in your garden - this not only provides you with more plants for your garden free of charge, it also gives you the opportunity of passing on plants to your friends or neighbours. And by dividing your plants your plants will benefit too, as regularly dividing perennials, say every 2-3 years, helps them remain healthy, encouraging vigorous growth.
The general rule of thumb when dividing plants, is those that have flowered before the longest day (June 21st) are good for autumn division, so that includes coneflowers, daylilies, delphiniums, hardy geraniums, hostas, primulas, salvia etc.
You should only divide perennials when the soil is dry enough to work - this means that if we have a wet September / October - then you might have to delay dividing your plants until Spring the following year.
As our borders in our gardens are packed full of plants, to provide ourselves with a temporary place to work, we use a ground sheet as close to where our plants are as possible.
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Large Garden Sheet This 1.7m square sheet provides amble space to work. Its made from strong polyethylene material which is easy to clean once I've finished working. The large webbing handles make to easy to move so I can lift and carry or 'drag' my new plant to its new position in the garden. Click here for purchasing details. |
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After digging up the whole plant - and shaking off as much loose soil as possible - it is placed onto the ground sheet ready to divide. Some plants can be divided just using your hands to tease apart the root structure - it should be possible to do this with hostas. However, if the roots are more solid or woodier, you will need the assistance of a sharp edged tool to cut through the roots - a traditional 'half moon' lawn edger works well, or a sharp edged spade, or if all else fails, a sharp saw - this would apply to plants such as delphiniums.
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Traditional Saw This saw has a tempered steel alloy blade which means it's rust resistant and will hold its edge for longer (and can be re-sharpened when required). Its curved shape makes it easy to use, encouraging the blade to bite downwards with less pressure. Ideal as a hand saw, we also use it with one of the Swop Top Handles when we are pruning trees. Click here for purchasing details. |
When you replant these newly divided plants, take advantage of the hole being dug and add in some garden compost or fertiliser, to give them the best start in their new locations.
Gardening In September - Get Ready For Glorious Autumn Colour
Another garden job to do in September is planting new hanging baskets and containers ready for an autumn / winter is a pleasure not a chore and when the weather is nice it’s great to sit outside and start arranging and planting ready for a gorgeous display of autumn colour.
“Gardening gives me fun and health and knowledge. It gives me laughter and colour. It gives me pictures of almost incredible beauty.”
Courtesy of John F Kenyon
When it comes to plants which will be well suited to both the cooler temperatures in September and smaller spaces of tubs, containers and baskets, here are just a few of the classics that spring to mind – and if you don’t grow your own plants then you will also find the garden centres packed full of many of these plants now just ready for you to start planting:
- Hardy Chrysanthemums – with a huge range of colours, shapes and sizes to choose from you are bound there is bound to be some to compliment the rest of your container plants – for smaller spaces stick to the miniature varieties.
- Hardy Cyclamen – usually found in shades of white, pink and red, the hardy varieties are perfect to add a touch of colour with their healthy green leaves, slim stems and bold blooms.
- Primroses – these can really pack a punch if you choose some of the brighter shades and are robust little plants perfect for compact spaces.
- Winter Heathers – to add a touch of colour and texture, adding heathers to your containers will provide you with flowers all the way through winter as well.
We would always recommend adding some foliage plants into your containers too – these will often help to show off the flowering plants to their best whilst at the same time add some contrast and texture. Ivies, cineraria, heuchera, ornamentals cabbages and grasses are just a few of the plants you could try.
Gardening In September - Start Preparing For Early Spring
As keen gardeners we can always find something to plant every month - planting for new growth is such a rewarding part of gardening.
"I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow."
Courtesy of David Hobson
Gardening in September we can start to sow hardy annuals, and depending on which part of the UK you live and what you are sowing will affect whether you can sow directly into the ground or whether you should start them off under glass – so in your greenhouse or in a cold frame for example.
Those hardy annuals which can normally be sown directly into your garden include the following:
- Calendula / Pot Marigolds
- Candytuft
- Cerinthe / Honeywort
- Clary
- Cornflowers / Scabiosa
- Eschscholzia / California Poppy
- Larkspur
- Love-In-This-Mist / Nigella
- Lupin
- Salvia
Although sowing directly into the ground can be a bit hit and miss, especially with our Great British Weather, when you succeed in growing this way it should result in plants that will be big and strong the following spring as they should have developed a healthy root system and more robust plants. You can help those seeds sown directly into your garden to survive the worst of the weather by providing them with some protection – using garden fleece or cloches to protect them from hard frosts etc.
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Bell Cloches It might not be frosty when you are planting in September, but with the Great British weather things can quickly change. As soon as we start planting hardy annuals we ensure we have some Bell Cloches in our stash. These high grade, UV stabilised plastic cloches provide instant weather - and pest - protection whilst allowing maximum light to reach your plants. Click here for purchasing details. |
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Top Tip When Sowing Directly Into The Ground
Make is easier for the seeds you sow to successfully germinate and immerge from the soil by ensuing that where they are sown is free from weeds, stones, lumps of earth etc. A little pre preparation of the soil with fork, hand fork or soil rake will help to break up the soil so it is fine and crumbly and won’t obstruct the young seedlings to reach the surface and the light they need to grow.
At Two Wests you already know that we always recommend labelling what you have sown! There are lots of reasons for this, depending on what you write on the label, from simply knowing where you have sown, what you have sown through to when it was sown so you know when to expect it to appear if it is germinating as expected. Plant labels are cheap, only take a few minutes to write, but can save so much confusion in the long term.
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Copper Plant Labels Aging beautifully over time from copper to verdigris, these labels will last for years. That makes them the perfect way to label up where you have planted in the Autumn so you don't forget and overplant with something else. Click here for purchasing details. |
Our blog posts are created from our personal knowledge, information gathered by speaking to other gardeners or manufacturers in the gardening industry, by reading gardening magazines and devouring information from books and the internet. We aim to be as accurate as we can, so if you find a mistake, please remember, we’re only human. if you have any queries you can contact us today!