Follow our guide on how to maintain and care for your garden in August.
Spray and Plant
Spray citrus against scale, and plant deciduous fruit trees and berry canes. Keep all subtropical fruit well-watered and feed with a fertiliser for fruit and flowers.
Prune
Prune formal and informal hedges and clean up under them. Feed with a balanced fertiliser and water well. Prune back the following autumn- and winter-flowering shrubs as soon as they have finished fowering: poinsettea, plumbago, tecoma, hypericums, heliotropes, solanums, canary creeper, golden shower and buddleja. Prune wisterias as soon as they have finished flowering by cutting back the side branches to about three buds.
Give plumbago a chop
Plumbago auriculata (Cape leadwort or plumbago) is described as a scrambler, and you can see why as this lovely indigenous shrub will send long stems through the branches of other large plants in its quest for sunlight. Now that the autumn flowering season is over, you can now prune your overgrown plumbagoes hard by removing leggy stems and cutting the whole bush back by about / of its size. Next remove all old stems in the centre of the plant to allow in air and light. When the pruning is done, spread out a fresh layer of compost around it and feed generously with a slow-release fertiliser for flowering shrubs. Water well afterwards and looforward to a fine show of sky-blue, phlox-like flowers in late summer to next autumn.
Plant
You can start planting summer-flowering bulbs like gladiolus, spider lily, George lily, tuberose, galtonia, watsonia, schizostylis, liatris, crocosmia, eucomis and storm lily.
Summer Annuals
In temperate areas start sowing summer annuals in prepared seed trays, to fill gaps in borders. Sow seeds of cosmos, lobularia, cleome, godetia, lavatera, marigold, flox and nicotiana.
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