As we write this, we have had three days without rain or wind and to be out in the sun in the garden reminds us of what a pleasure it can be. Now all we need are a couple of degrees of extra warmth and a fine weekend to make all gardeners feel that everything is well in their world.

• If you have small feature conifers (and the dwarves and smaller growing varieties make splendid year round feature plants), cleaning out the accumulated debris from the centre of the plant is not only quite a satisfying task, it is also good for the plant and can reduce disease or pest problems. We have the country’s conifer experts in New Plymouth at Cedar Lodge so the best of advice is available locally. If you are into clipping conifers, be cautious about cutting back to bare wood as many will not sprout again (totara is an exception). It is often safer to renovate a tired plant by finding its established branch structure and featuring its lovely gnarly shapes rather than trying for bushy sentinels.
• Get onto planting woody trees and shrubs soon so they can get established before summer. Garden centres should have the best range available at this time, except possibly for fruit trees which probably sold out a while ago.
• The weeds are on the march. Ignore them at your peril. The nasty seeding bitter cress has already produced its first generation of seeding parents who will continue to multiply exponentially if you let them.
• With spring approaching, carrots, summer spinach and onions can now be direct sown into the vegetable garden. You can still get a good crop of garlic if you missed the mid winter timing, but give this priority if you are still to sow it. Dig in green crops. They need a few weeks to break down before you plant into the area. Really weedy vegetable gardens can be dug over and the weeds treated as a green crop, providing they are not seeding. Don’t think you will get away with digging in the weed seeds.
• It is your last chance to prune grape vines although they will likely weep now because the sap will be rising.

The Quotable Gardener has a whole section of excerpts about lawns. American garden writer, Michael Pollan perhaps came up with the most succinct:

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.

There we were hailing the arrival of spring last week, only to be assailed by not one but two frosts at the weekend and more cold weather and rain during the week. But the plants are telling us that spring is on the way and the prettiest time of the year for flowers is just starting.

• Over sow bare patches in lawns. If you feel you must use hormone lawn sprays to get rid of broad leafed weeds, it is best to get onto it as soon as we get a reasonably dry spell. Even with very careful application, some spray drift can occur and badly distort new growth on surrounding plants, particularly deciduous plants so you don’t want to be using hormone sprays when leaf break starts. You can however dig them out by hand at any time and feel virtuous at your decision to avoid the use of chemicals.
• You can still be digging and dividing clumping perennials but the highest priority in the ornamental garden is to get the winter pruning of deciduous plants done.
• Sasanqua camellias can be pruned and shaped now. They are the autumn flowering camellias.
• If you have green crops in the vegetable garden, start digging them in to give them time to break down before you put in the spring and summer crops.
• It is still a little early to get carried away planting in the vegetable garden unless you know what you are doing. Better to use your time preparing the beds and starting the plants in containers and trays to plant out when we have well and truly turned the corner into spring.
• One organic reference book counsels pruning apple trees now but leaving stone fruit trees until just at the point where they are going into growth in early spring. This apparently reduces the chances of disease getting into the cuts. One of the tenets of organic gardening is that healthy plants withstand diseases and pests best so if you are leaning in the organic direction, give a high priority to plant health and care.
• Keep on top of weeds.

Potatoes are of course originally from South America and were introduced to Europe by the Spanish in the middle of the sixteenth century. It would be fair to say that they were not an instant hit. Indeed some even believed that the potato caused leprosy (on account of its lumpy, pockmarked appearance) and the Protestants rejected them because of the South American association with Catholicism. The Germans used to feed them primarily to animals and prisoners while in the same vein, the English gave the potato to the Irish (parsnips were preferred as a staple food in the mother country). How the reputation of the potato has changed over time.

Certainly in the north we are warming up noticeably and the grass is starting to grow again. While we will no doubt get a few more wintery blasts, when the sun comes out it is feeling positively spring-like. In the gardening world, this means that the pressure is about to increase exponentially to finish the winter pruning and clean up round.

• Climbing roses get pruned differently to shrub roses. Tie in the long whippy growths for the first three years after planting and resist the temptation to prune them back. If you can undulate the whips along supports or train them more or less horizontally, it encourages all the side shoots to sprout and hugely increases the flower production. After three years, take out the oldest, woodiest stems and replace them with fresh green whips on a rotational basis. Prune back the side growths from the tied-in whips, to a few buds just as you do with wisteria. Climbing roses are not the easiest of subjects to prune and tend to be very vigorous but you may live to regret it if you fail to prune them hard.
• Beware an explosion in weeds which is just about to happen. If you can stop this first seeding of the season, you will substantially reduce your workload later.
• It is an ideal time for planting woody trees and shrubs. Put in now, they have time to establish themselves before the dryness and heat of summer. People on sandy soils which dry out faster, should take particular note.
• It is time to be vigilant on slugs and snails again. These unwelcome critters will be multiplying up nicely and nipping off all your young shoots. Some intensive control now will reduce numbers later but you do not need to use slug bait like fertiliser. One bait can kill several. Digital control, beer and other environmentally sensitive approaches are also kinder to hedgehogs, birds and the odd suicidal family dog.
• Container plants should be repotted every two years or so, especially if they are somewhat rootbound. It is a good time to attend to them now so they can settle in again before making spring growth. If you are intending to prune the roots to make them fit back into the same pot, then it is even more important that you do it without delay. Hose off all the old potting mix and make sure you prune the top of the plant to reduce stress. Slow release fertilisers were developed for container plants. We don’t recommend their use in the garden generally (there are cheaper, more environmentally friendly options) but we do use them in pot plants. If your plant is destined to stay undercover, halve the recommended rate of fertiliser to avoid burning the plant.
• Early sowings will be starting in the vegetable garden – potatoes in warm areas, peas (pick an early cropping variety), turnips, carrots, parsnips, summer spinach and beet. A reminder that if you are buying asparagus divisions, you are likely to have more success with them if you get them established and growing well in pots before you plant them at the required 10cm plus depth in the garden. Asparagus is a bit of a long haul crop at the best of times (you will be waiting three years for the first harvest) and it is a permanent fixture so it is worth this extra effort and delay.

According to The Curious Gardener’s Almanac, over three quarters of all garden chemicals sold in Britain are for the improvement of lawns. It is likely to be similar here and that is a disgraceful situation when you think about it. Time to rethink attitudes to lawns.

If your magnolia tree is opening misshapen and severely damaged blooms, the likely culprit is a possum which has beaten you to the tree and eaten out the centre of the bud.

Mark performs autopsies on all possums shot here and there are often one or two per season with stomachs full of magnolia buds. You have two alternatives – trapping or high velocity lead. It is usually only one that has discovered the taste treat so you don’t have to eliminate the entire population as long as you catch the guilty one.

• Roses are starting to move. Don’t be panicked by that, but you are probably safe to prune now even in colder areas. Pruning forces the plants into strong new growth but by the time that happens, we will be nearing the end of August and the main risk of severe frosts will be over for most.
• Lawn purists will be raking out the mosses from their grassy swards and dethatching the build up of residue from dead leaves. Certain grasses such as fescues do not rot down quickly and can build up a thatch over time. Bare areas can be over sown now. While you can feed the lawn at this time, most people will wait until the temperatures warm up a little.
• If you feel your garden is lacking in winter interest and colour, look to the hellebores, cyclamen coum, the miniature narcissi (daffies) many of which are flowering now, snowdrops, early camellias and daphnes.
• Nandina domestica Richmond is a stunner at this time of the year with its brilliant festoons of bright red-orange berries. If you have a plant which is not berrying, alas you have probably bought a seedling which may never berry. Give it a couple more years and if it fails to berry profusely, rip it out. Plant nurseries should know better than to sell nandina seedlings but it does happen.
• In the vegie garden, prepare beds and plan. Planting season will be on us within a few weeks and it helps if you are ready to move straight in with ground that is already prepared.
• The art of keeping garden pests under control is to get in early before they get established so the winter copper and oil spray of fruit trees is the single most important spray of the year. Ditto for roses.

While most of us dislike weeding, Clare Leighton wrote in 1935:

There is some hope in weeding, for the weeds may one day be defeated, but the tidying of a garden is as exacting and unending as the daily washing of dishes.

Spring can not be far away. The earliest flowering magnolias are the campbelliis and already they have opened their first blooms. Check the trees in the Victor Davies Park next to the radio station on Powderham Street if you live in town. The campanulata cherries are just starting to break into flower for us which the tuis will be looking forward to. Another gardening year is about to start.

• All this means that the pressure is coming on to get the winter pruning round underway – roses, wisterias, deciduous fruit trees, grapevines, many clematis and hydrangeas (the buds are already swelling on ours) are the main candidates for an annual winter haircut. Leave cherry trees alone (these get pruned in summer) and resist the temptation to be too drastic with late winter and spring flowering trees and shrubs or you will be cutting off their flower buds. We admit we have yet to prune our raspberries but they too should have been attended to by now. Cut off last year’s fruiting canes because the plant produces its fruit on new wood. Shorten the new canes to manageable height.
• Take time to smell the daphnes. If you are planting daphne, they prefer to be out of full sun and in humus rich soil. Because they are winter flowering, they are usually best planted by pathways or entrances so you can smell them as you dash past under an umbrella.
• If you have early potatoes in the ground, earth them up as they shoot so you are creating a mound. This is standard practice. It allows the soil to warm faster, kills the weeds, can protect emerging shoots from frost and gives a thicker layer to prevent the greening of the young tubers later on. You can plant potatoes any time now as long as you can protect them from frosts.
• Peas, brassicas, silver beet and its allies, even an early sowing of carrot seed can be put in now. Broad beans can still be sown to give a late crop.
• In the current wet spell, watch citrus trees for botrytis (the leaves go brown and fall off). You may need to give them a copper spray.
• Roses and all deciduous fruit trees benefit from a winter spray of copper as part of the clean up round.

· Cora Lea Bell, who was presumably American with a name like that, wrote:

An addiction to gardening is not all bad when you consider the other choices in life.