May is the month where our gardens really take off and plants begin to grow more fervently and start to flower.

It’s a good idea to stake and support plants before they actually need to be helped. Peonies will always need supporting, as well as tall asters and rudbeckia. With these plants that often end up flopping over, I put in supports before the plants are at full height so they grow into the structure to hide it and look more natural.

The ‘Chelsea Chop’ helps to produce more flowers

An alternative to staking some perennials is to give them the ‘Chelsea Chop’. This works for later flowering plants such as sedums, goldenrod and the larger varieties of nepeta, and is where you take a pair of garden shears and chop off the top third or half of the plant’s new growth. It takes a certain confidence to seemingly curtail the plant’s vigour, but in doing so it will actually produce more flowers as it sends out more shoots lower down.

Let nature flourish in your lawn

‘No Mow May’ is gaining popularity and encourages gardeners to pack away the lawn mower for a month and allow their lawns to grow long, flower and let nature flourish within them. This is a great idea for biodiversity in the garden if you don’t already have an area set aside for a wildflower meadow.

It is always a balance in a garden, between aiding nature and remaining practical for the gardener. In this vein, I would say that while not mowing lawns and having meadows are some of the best ways to support local nature, getting the mower out to mow a strip along the edges of your flower beds to preserve their integrity and mowing paths through your tall grass and wildflowers so you can walk among them is a really nice way to ensure your garden is still enjoyable for you as well as all the critters living within.

Plant out courgettes, peas and runner beans

As the nights are getting warmer by the end of the month, it is a good time to plant out your tender veg. Courgettes can be planted out, as well as peas and runner beans. There are loads of vegetable seeds that can go straight into the soil this month too, including: beetroots, radish, carrots and turnips.

With the warmer, and especially the wetter weather, slugs and snails can become pretty active; but instead of putting slug pellets out by your plants, which is really harmful to your garden birds, try putting some copper rings around your young vegetable plants, as slugs will not cross them.