May is a marvellous month – the garden is blooming, plants are starting to flower and show their true colours and beds and borders are beginning to fill out and have definition again.
If you want to encourage bees and butterflies to your flower beds then think about some wildlife-friendly summer bedding such as tobacco plants and petunias. You could also try some edible flowers like nasturtiums and borage.
Nasturtiums are well suited to pots, beds and borders in full sun or partial shade – you can cut them back quite hard during the growing season and they will bounce back.
The flowers are best harvested in the morning, just as they are opening, and you can add both flowers and leaves to salads for a peppery flavour.
Borage flowers have a refreshing taste that has a hint of cucumber. As with nasturtiums, pick blooms early in the morning and then use them to brighten up a salad or add some zest to a sandwich. It’s best to harvest borage leaves when they are young for the best taste and texture.
Another way to encourage wildlife into your garden is to do nothing! ‘No Mow May’ is back this year, bringing another boost of much-needed nectar to pollinators as gardeners throughout the UK pledge not to mow their lawns for the month.
By keeping the mower locked up for another few weeks, you give spring plants a chance to set seed before the first cutting, making for healthier, more diverse lawns.
Figures show that if you mow less, the pollen count on your lawn can increase tenfold in the amount of nectar available to bees and other pollinators.
In addition to stocking your garden with nectar-producing plants, other top jobs for gardeners this month include:
Plus, here’s what the experts have to say...
Royal Horticultural Society: “As bulbs fade and herbaceous borders grow in leaps and bounds, it is now clear that summer is approaching.
“Sowing and planting out bedding can begin, depending on regional weather variations, and you can take softwood cuttings.
“It’s also time to get back into the lawn mowing regime, as the lawn will be loving the warmer temperatures this month brings.”
Gardeners’ World: “Many vegetable, herb and flower seeds can be directly sown outdoors, while earlier sowings can now be planted out after a period of acclimatisation (hardening off) to outside conditions.
“Plenty of seeds can be sown indoors, too, including more tender crops like cucumber and melon. Sowing indoors will protect young plants from slugs and snails – by planting them outside when they’re large enough to handle you’ll give them a head start on predators.”
Alan Titchmarsh: “For gardeners, May is the loveliest month of the year, when leaves are fresh and green and spring is at its richest.
“All you need is a range of plants that will give you their best in this most generous of months. So if your outside space is looking a little underwhelming, get down to your local garden centre or nursery now and give it a shot in the arm – or the beds and borders.”
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