Gardening Jobs for October: Head Gardener’s Tips

October 25 2023 | Garden

Head Gardener Neil Miller shares his tips of gardening jobs for October.

October is the month to start planting your bulbs to ensure you have wonderful spring colour the following year. For pots, we like to use the ‘lasagne’ technique of layering bulbs which will provide colour from February through to April.

Leaves will be starting to fall now, so ensure any spent leaves are collected. To some this job can be rather therapeutic and a few of the gardeners here love to get the blower out and have a good clean up.

Here’s a tip to help increase the number of plants in your garden for free.

Seeds can be collected and saved from trees, shrubs, perennials, alpines, vegetables, herbs etc, at different times in the year, but in October we are focusing on collecting seeds from Faith’s Garden – the fantastic perennial border.

Seeds come in all shapes and sizes and need careful handling during the sorting and drying process. Some, like grasses, are fluffy and a pinch works. Others such as Peony are so big they are easy to count individually and put into an envelope. Most seeds can be kept to sow in the spring (hellebores are an exception and prefer to be sowed immediately). Click here for further information.

You may also need to compost any summer pots and hanging baskets that are spent.