The autumn jobs that decide what your garden looks like next summer

Most people garden hardest in May, when everything is already growing. But the work that decides how a garden looks next June is done in September and October, while the soil is still warm and there is enough light to work in after tea.

1. Scarify and aerate the lawn

If you do one thing this autumn, do this. Pulling out the thatch and moss and opening up compacted clay gives grass roots somewhere to go over winter. Do it in September while the grass can still recover, not November.

2. Feed with the right feed

Autumn lawn feed is low in nitrogen and high in potash. That is deliberate: it toughens the plant and builds root mass rather than pushing soft leafy growth that will be flattened by the first hard frost. Using spring feed in autumn does real damage.

3. Clear leaves, but keep some

Leaves left on a lawn will kill the grass beneath within weeks — they block light and hold moisture against the sward, which is an open invitation to moss. Off the lawn, though, leaves are free soil improver. Stack them in a corner or a bin liner with a few holes punched in it and you will have leaf mould in a year.

4. Cut back, but not everything

Cut back anything that has collapsed, gone slimy, or is harbouring disease. Leave seed heads on things like sedum, echinacea and ornamental grasses — they look genuinely good under frost and they feed birds through the hungry months. A garden cut down to bare soil in October is a bleak thing to look at until March.

5. Plant bulbs

Daffodils and crocus go in from September; tulips are better left until November, when the colder soil reduces the risk of tulip fire. Plant them at roughly three times their own depth, and plant more than feels sensible — nobody has ever stood in a garden in April and wished for fewer daffodils.

6. Deal with the gutters and the paths

Unglamorous, but a blocked gutter in November causes damp that costs a great deal more than an hour on a ladder in October. The same goes for slippery green algae on paths and steps: a pressure wash now is a fall avoided in January.

What to leave until spring

Do not prune spring-flowering shrubs — forsythia, flowering currant, most clematis — in autumn. They have already set next spring's flower buds, and cutting them now removes the display you are waiting for. Prune those after they flower.

Our seasonal garden care plan covers all of this at the right point in the year, so it happens whether or not the weekend weather cooperates.