Kamal Ghorui
With the weather improving and the sunshine finally gracing gardens, many UK homeowners are considering ways to enhance their outdoor spaces. While some start the task by mowing the lawn, others are eager to introduce vibrant colour to their borders. However, one seasoned gardening expert is warning about a major pitfall.Peter Dowdall, who has 30 years of experience in horticulture, says people are making a common mistake when spring arrives. “If this is being published in the next week or two, then another common mistake people make at the moment is, particularly with the improvement in the weather, we are in a mad rush to see colour in the garden. We run down to the garden centre, get lots and lots of summer bedding plants and put them out straight away. That’s a big mistake,” Dowdall told The Mirror.Weather forecasts suggest that there could be sunny spells through to next week, when rainfall is expected to return. Though colourful plants alongside a freshly manicured lawn look perfect, Dowdall explained why this is problematic.“With the lovely blue-sky days at the moment, that does mean cold nights. So these plants wouldn’t be, they wouldn’t even be resistant to low temperatures. It wouldn’t have to be frost or zero; even if it is down to two, three or four, it is too cold for them. So a lot of these plants, all of these plants really, would have been grown in artificial conditions, in glasshouses, in tunnels, and then you will be buying them in either centrally heated supermarkets or in a protected structure in a garden centre. So that’s why they look good, but they are not ready to go outside straight away,” he explained.
Lawn maintenance mistakes
For those considering making improvements to the lawn, Dowdall urges equal caution. There is another common mistake people tend to make: purchasing products from garden centres such as bags of lawn feed containing both moss killer and weed killer combined. He stressed that this is an environmentally problematic and wasteful procedure in general.As most gardeners turn to the internet with questions, Dowdall has developed a free online function called Ask Peter, where you can get expert advice from him.“I know from working 20-odd years in retail garden centres that when customers walk into garden centres, you can see they’re just nervous. They don’t know all the names, and they’re put off by the terms,” he said.
