Head gardener Benjamin Pope and gardener and writer Aaron Bertelsen are here to make sure your garden looks great all year round.
Don't miss our suggestions of the best plants for November, what gardens to visit and the gardening jobs for the month.
November’s cooler temperatures slow growth in the garden to a resting pace. Squally showers tug at
the deciduous foliage of trees and shrubs, leaving all but the giant oaks leafless. Conspicuous crab apples burn bright with the intense yellow of Malus ‘Comtesse de Paris’ and glowing scarlet fruits of M. x robusta ‘Red Sentinel’ counteracting dull cloudy days.
What to plant in November in the garden
Low light levels and short days make this month less suitable for sowing many seeds. However, trees, shrubs and umbel seed often germinate better following a period of cold weather and can be sown now, covered with grit and left somewhere outside, safe from mice and other pests.
I like to use open cold frames, where I can protect plants from excessive rainfall and offer night protection – but planting in a sheltered spot near to the house or a shed will work just as well.
In mild parts of the country, you can direct sow broad beans and plant out autumn garlic and onion sets.
Indoors I like to sow micro greens and cut-and-come-again salad leaves that can easily be grown on a windowsill or greenhouse shelf. Mixed seed packets are available and include various beets, brassicas, mustards and herbs, all of which are packed with flavour and nutrients.
Sowing several peas into a two- or three-litre pot will also provide pea shoots for winter cropping. Where sowing is sparse this month, planting is not and now is the perfect time to plant trees, shrubs, roses and hedging. BP
What to plant out in November
As gardeners we are always thinking ahead, and these dark days are the perfect time to turn your thoughts to what you will be growing over the coming year and to a fruit that epitomises summer –
the strawberry. I don’t grow them in the ground myself, but I always enjoy a visit to Tom Coward’s strawberry patch at Gravetye Manor, as does my dog Conifer – they grow at a most convenient height
if you are a Dachshund. I prefer to keep mine out of harm’s way by growing them in pots in the kitchen yard. Given a good, rich compost and regular feeding they will do very well and look extremely pretty too. If you are planting in the open ground, place each plant on to a mound of soil to help drainage – they are rather prone to rotting off. Expect to get two to three seasons out of a plant before it needs replacing.
Fortunately, they are incredibly easy to propagate, sending out runners in all directions. Simply snip off
the baby plants in summer, pot them up.
What to sow in November
Every summer I feel a little sad about my crop of broad beans. There are simply never enough. At some point, I would love to have a polytunnel to help nurture them through the colder months, but for now I must content myself with extending the season as far as I can with two sowings, one in late
autumn and one in early spring, and hoping for the best. I sow direct, first marking the individual planting sites with sturdy stakes pushed into the ground. I then push seeds in either side of the stakes, creating
a double row with a gap of about 20cm in between the supports running down the middle. Make sure you have some decent twine to tie the plants in when they start to grow.
Cover the area with a layer of fleece to encourage germination. My cultivar of choice is ‘Aquadulce Claudia’, tried and tested over many years. But for something a little different, try ‘Crimson Flowered’,
which, as the name implies, has glorious, deep reddish-pink blossoms. I first heard of it through Diggers Club, an Australian organisation that has done much to preserve heirloom varieties of fruit and vegetables, but the seeds are now widely available. AB
