Head gardener Benjamin Pope is here to make sure your garden looks great all year round. His practical gardening magazine column series continues, and his tips on what to plant in December are a taster of what you can expect. For the full column, subscribe to Gardens Illustrated magazine.
Don’t miss our suggestions of the best plants for December, what gardens to visit and the gardening jobs for the month.
It may be cold outside but you can still get oust in the garden with our advice on winter gardening jobs, and more planting ideas with the experts’ choice of the best winter flowers. And don’t miss the best gardens to visit this month.
What to sow in December
With December being cold and the darkest month, sowing most seeds now would prove a futile exercise without supplementary lighting and warmth, so it’s better to wait for longer days and warmer temperatures. That said, I’ll still sow micro greens and pea shoots, both of which depend simply on their stored food reserves to quickly get them to the point of harvest.
However, now is the perfect time to take hardwood cuttings of many deciduous shrubs, trees and climbers, such as abelia, holly, honeysuckle, philadelphus, willow and grapevines, along with fruit bushes such as currants and gooseberries.
With the seed sowing on hold, I turn my attention and time to planting, especially trees, shrubs, hedges and roses, which can all be purchased as bareroot plants. The benefits of planting bareroot are numerous. More often their root systems are more vigorous, so subsequent establishment and growth is stronger, with other benefits including reduced costs of plants and transport.
Now is also a good time to move any existing trees or shrubs, that perhaps in hindsight you realise you may have planted in the wrong place.