September in the garden

Many of the jobs the garden will give you to do in September are to do with keeping it tidy and clean. If you leave old flowers on roses and other shrubs they will waste energy setting seed but not only that but you will be encouraging mildew and other diseases which will overwinter if it turns out to be mild so that you start the next spring with problems already in place. Trim back any spindly growth on shrubs and trees to keep a compact shape, but make sure that the centre doesn’t get too dense. Plants need light and air to stay healthy and if the middles get too crowded the branches will die back and you will get at best an ugly lop-sided plant, at worst a dead one. If you wish to save some seed though for next years sowing do so then when the seed has been collected trim the plant back or remove if its an annual.