My essential Easter gardening tasks

An early April Easter is a blessing for gardeners. We can catch up with the calendar before the spring runs away from us. We can even risk a few new initiatives among the clearing, cleaning and weeding. First, though, a welcome to old friends.

Yet again, narcissi and daffodils are having a superb year. They were the first great comfort of last year’s lockdown, as lovely as I ever remember them. They are nearly as good this year, after such a wet winter. Round the edges of my main lawn I have built up long ribbons of two low-growing, yellow-flowered beauties, Narcissus Jack Snipe and Tête-à-tête. Along with February Gold, I recommend them to everyone, however small their gardens.

I use them to edge the front and back of long beds in the front lawn, shaped like the letter L. They are my personal take on Monet’s famous paintbox beds, also laid out to be long and narrow. I have four L-plate beds in honour of my four driving tests, only the last of which qualified me for the road.

One job not to do this weekend is to mow down fading crocuses, narcissi and other early spring bulbs. The weeks after flowering are the weeks in which they build up strength for next year’s flowering before their leaves gradually die back. Do not mow them down in a lawn or rough grass while they are trying to do so. The rule is to leave them for at least six weeks after they began to flower.

This weekend the better thing to do to crocuses is to dust the ground around them with powdered fertiliser, bonemeal being excellent for the job. Do not use anything that promotes leafy growth by being high in nitrogen. You are feeding for the future, building up the corms for another year.

At the recent FT Weekend Digital Festival, I misjudged the timing of my session with Sarah Raven, queen of cut flowers, mail-order bulbs, bedding and so forth. We ran on, enjoying it, and I failed to leave time for most of the questions that were coming in. I remember three in the first batch that I will answer here, as they are topical and of wide interest.

First up, can we kill or control the dreaded box moth and if so, how? The answer is yes, with regular effort. Some of you have sent me reports of your successes with alternatives, including whey left over from cheese making, and of course there are moth-traps, usable in summer.

I find that these traps are valuable for warning us that box moths are present, but not as a remedy on their own. They catch only some of the culprits, and so I recommend one of the sprays on the market. Visit topbuxus.com, an invaluable website for box owners, and check out XenTari. It should be diluted at about 1g to 1L of water and sprayed on to the box moth caterpillars when they become visible in box leaves, preferably before they have eaten too many of them.

I have two diligent FT correspondents who keep me posted about the moth’s density and movements in their gardens. Both have just warned me that it will be active very soon now that spring has been warming gardens. The caterpillars are difficult to detect when still green, but XenTari will certainly kill them. The spraying should be repeated every 10 days.

For an account of defeating box moth by spraying, visit the May 2 2018 Country Life article by the respected Kathryn Bradley-Hole (available at countrylife.co.uk). She used the chemical Dipel, as she had taken a basic spraying course and was eligible to use this professional product with a clear conscience. It is available online from agrigem.co.uk and costs £60 for a big 500g tub.

It will help those of you with bigger runs of box hedging, on which Bradley-Hole sets out the results, emphasising that it is a biological product. It is recommended for professional use because amateurs might also accidentally spray any butterflies or their eggs in box hedging. There are usually none in mine.

Next question: what would be a suitable rose for a Victorian arch? Unless your garden is historically limited for a specialised reason, I would not be a historical purist. The rose on this arch does not have to have existed before 1901. If it is one that looks good on an old arch, it is good enough for my eye. We are lucky to have it, whereas the Victorians did not.

We are also lucky to have had David Austin. Many of his roses have turned out to be particularly good as climbers because they flower right down to their base and usually repeat well. On an arch I would use The Pilgrim, a lovely rose in his old English series. The flowers are flat when fully open and a very pretty yellow, paling towards the outer edge of each flower. It also has some scent.

If yellow is not what you want, try St Swithun, recommended by Austin for the purpose. Its soft pink flowers are packed with petals and have a scent too. St Swithun is not a tall rose, so it is ideal for bending over a historic arch. Victorians would love it.

Third up: what are good clematis for Easter planting? This question is very apt as clematis are now showing new growth, allowing us to be sure that we are buying one in a garden centre that is full of vigour. For a first-class range visit thorncroftclematis.co.uk, regular gold medallists at the Chelsea show. Among much else it offers the excellent new varieties bred by Raymond Evison on Guernsey, who has aimed them specifically at small gardens, back yards and balconies.

Try his excellent Parisienne, one that thrives in a deep pot and grows 3ft-4ft high. The starry flowers are a good shade of mid-lilac blue with deep red central stamens. In a pot beside it try Nubia, a rich deep shade of red.

In a pot beside Meghan I can have double-flowered Princess Charlotte, and behind them, a Prince Louis

These pot-compatible clematis are a blessing for urban gardeners and small spaces. What, though, about Meghan, selected in 2018, which shows a deep blushing shade of purple red? Looking at the options, I have decided to be not “unproductive” and go for a royal flush.

In a pot beside Meghan I can have double-flowered Princess Charlotte, a pretty lilac, and behind them, at a height of about 6ft, Prince Louis, whose wavy-edged flowers of violet blue have a central white stripe. Over big shrubs nearby I can train two tubular flowered texensis varieties: Princess Kate, with rose-pink and white flowers, and Prince William, whose flowers hang down in shades of lavender purple.

On some plastic trellis on a wall behind the pots I can have Prince Charles, a free-flowering pale blue, and pure white Prince George, a newish arrival.

They have every chance of making a unified show, especially as I cannot find a liquid fertiliser called Oprah to complicate their lives.

Video on demand tickets are still available for the FT Weekend Digital Festival, giving access to all the talks at the three-day event. Visit ftweekend.live.ft.com

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