This month, while the soil is still warm, is the best time for dividing and planting many herbaceous perennials (but don’t split grasses until the spring). This year is giving us a fine crop of apples and pears, and other fruit – now is the time to start harvesting them and storing in a cool dry place for the winter. If it stops raining for long enough, lawns benefit from raking away moss and thatch.
The garden centres are currently full of violas, primroses and polyanthus, and wallflowers, all for an early spring show in pots, window boxes and small beds. It is still not too late to plant prepared hyacinths for a Christmas or January display.
If you have an area set aside for a wild flower meadow or patch, this is the perfect time for putting in plug plants – primroses, cowslips, harebells, campion etc,. will all establish well now. And if the grass is too coarse, try sowing some yellow-rattle seed amongst it wherever there is a little bare soil. The seed needs cold weather before it will germinate in the spring, but this semi-parasitic annual will weaken the grass and allow more attractive wild plants to flourish – and its flowers look attractive in their own right.