Plant garlic, save the leaves: Six things to do in your garden right now

The sun is so soft and slanting at this time of year that everything in the garden glows. The summer glare has disappeared but the winter flatness is yet to arrive, leaving a window that is relaxed and radiant.

Plants that have been actively growing for months are now casually rambling into each other with the late autumn colours lifting the mood even higher. It’s a moment to savour. But it’s also a moment to get working because the longer you look, the more you see all the jobs that need doing.

Here’s what to do in your garden now.

Plant

While everyone makes a beeline for nurseries in spring when growth is running rampant, late autumn is actually the better time to get planting. Buy trees, shrubs and perennials now and tuck them into the ground so their roots have time to start getting established while the soil is moist and before they’re subjected to the stresses of a dry, hot summer.

Plant spring-flowering bulbs, including alliums, tulips, bluebells and daffodils, and they will explode from the soil in a few months’ time.

Assess your garden for gaps that need filling or for failing-to-thrive plants that might be removed to make way for new fare that will be more sturdy and satisfying. Decide where you could do with more shade, screening and other shapes in the garden. Think about exactly the sort of garden in which you would want to linger.

Propagate

For some plants, you don’t need to visit a nursery at all but can create a bounty of new seedlings in your backyard for free. Saving seeds, dividing and taking cuttings are all effective ways of bumping up stocks, with the resulting repetition also helping to create a sense of cohesion across the garden.

Everlasting daisies, billy buttons, nicotiana and scabiosa are just some of the ornamentals from which you can now collect seed – from fully dried flowerheads – to store for next season’s sowing.

Take semi-hardwood cuttings of shrubs and perennials with woody stems, including lavender, sage and buddleia, while many perennials (kangaroo paws, sedums, asters and daylilies, for example) can be dug up and divided.

Cut back

Many shrubs have put on so much new growth by this point of May that they can start to look out of scale with the plants around them. It’s time to sharpen things up and get everything back in balance. But don’t go overboard. Keep a looser rein on some shrubs, especially those that suit a natural jagged look (berberis and rosemary, say) or those that will bloom in winter (westringia and correa).

Lightly prune hedges as well but wait until spring to cut them hard, as it is this cut that will encourage the new growth to be thick and bushy.

Leave the autumn leaves

Relish in them and, whatever you do, don’t send them off in the green waste. Autumn leaves are pure gold in the garden, so leave as many as you can to slowly break down, creating mulch for the soil, habitat for insects and food for worms. They will aerate your soil and contribute to the wider food web.

Pile the rest into wire cages, plastic bags with holes punched through or the compost and in a year (if you can wait) they will have reduced into a fine carbon-rich crumble.

Weed

No sooner do we get a spot of autumn rain than we get new weeds. In the dryness of summer you can almost forget you have them, but no such luck now.

Pull them as you see them and simply drop them to rot down in place or add them to your compost. But make sure no soil is left exposed in the process. Nettles, fumitory, dandelions and the like can play a role in protecting the soil from the wind, heavy rain and sun. Even plants you don’t want can be better than no plants at all.

Tend the vegetable garden

Bite the bullet and remove the last of your tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and other summer produce to make way for cool-season fare. Garlic, onions, broad beans, brassicas and leafy greens are just some of the edibles that can be planted or sown now. Keep an eye out for new seedlings of parsley, kale, silverbeet and other ready self-seeders that might be emerging of their own accord.

Keep your soil rich and lively by adding compost and, if you have beds that you are not planning use for a couple of months, sow an autumn-winter green manure mix that can then be cut and dug back into the soil before it sets seed.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.