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Do you have an autumn clear-up in your garden? Do you cut down all your herbaceous stuff so that everything is tidy for the winter or do you leave everything until the new year? Most people nowadays leave it until later to give food for small birds

, though, without the plant ending up looking like St. Sebastian strapped awkwardly to a stake, and the string and bamboo look is not generally desirable.2. Take your courage and your secateurs and cut the thing right back to a couple of inches above ground

I'm sitting on a train as I write this, something I do more frequently than I used to, in an effort to cut back on the number of miles I drive each year. One of the best things about taking the train is being able to gaze, semi-comatose, through

its vigorous suckers (and copious amounts of seed) can easily become a problem. Each plant can cover many square metres of ground and on Colonsay (and other areas of west Scotland) it thrives on the acid soil and is taking over great swathes

on their side, or vicious dogs that will not take kindly to you wandering into their garden.Fencing is quite hard work, but relatively straightforward. Here are some important points to remember:Make sure the line is straight - you don’t want your fence

, with regular deadheading, keep going until the autumn. Propagation is also quite simple: take cuttings from the non-flowering shoots in the summer.I haven't even started on alpine and annual varieties but must mention D. carthusianorum - a really good perennial

out, so I cut off a bit and went to the library to attempt an identification: after much tracking of mud across the pages of the Reader's Digest guide to plants (my belated apologies to Hammersmith and Fulham Libraries) I left burdened with knowledge

the bush you are clipping with water as that stops the sap sticking to the clipper blades (which blunts them) and secondly to keep taking a step back to make sure that you are cutting the right lines. There is also a project on this very website about hedge

. This is not nearly as scary as it sounds as it is simple to manage. It sends up fast-growing, very vertical shoots, with tinkling silver leaves that bustle and worry in the breeze. When one trunk gets too big you cut it down and let another take its place.

and an interesting story.The elder has always been considered a magic plant, supposed to ward off evil and provide useful protection from witches - in some parts of the world cutting down an elder may bring the wrath of some evil sprite upon you. If that is the case