Events in June:

- BBC Gardeners' World - 11 to 15 June 2008, Birmingham. Details

- Three Counties Agricultural Show - 13 to 15 June 2008, Malvern. Details: 01684 584900

- East of England Country Show - 13 to 15 June 2008. Details: 01733 234451

51 glorious garden websites

Times Online's gardening guru opens her address book to share her top pick of gardening websites

Related Internet Links

• A ten step guide for novice gardeners

• The gardening year planner - what to do, when

• Guides for vegetable growers

Background

• A gardener's guide to healing herbs and flowers

• Fruit bushes: what to grow and how to get a good crop

• Plant it now: a beginner's guide to snowdrops

• Neil Wormald’s week: a potted guide to growing chillies

• A guide to making a great patio garden

Background

• A year in the garden: tasks for every season

• How to start a vegetable garden

• Twenty vegetable catalogues

• Eight great vegetable gardening books

Background

• Growing kinds of chilli. . .

• Go ahead, pack it in

• Seeds of change

• Dolce vita on a plate

• Salad days that last forever

Background

• Let’s not lose the plots

• A plot on the land

• Seeds of change

• There's life in the allotment

• One potato, two potato...

- Royal Highland Show - 19 to 22 June 2008, Edinburgh. Details: 0131 335 6216.

June's reader queries answered by Stephen Anderton, The Times. Click here to read

Week 1:

What to do this week:

- Cut back the spent flower spikes of euphorbia wulfenii. Wear gloves as the milky sap can cause skin irritations

- Check borders and remove any self-sown seedlings of sycamore trees

- Sow pak choi seeds in the vegetable garden

- Protect the developing fruits of redcurrants, whitecurrants and strawberries from birds

- Propagate clematis by layering the stems.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Train bindweed up canes so you can then apply glyphosate to the leaves with a rubber glove. Make sure ground elder is dead-headed, variegated form included, so that at least it can’t drop seed

- Fertilise weak-growing lawns. Rake up the runners of speedwell before you mow, so the blades can reach them

- Shear back aubrieta so that the clumps stay tight for next year. Cut out the spent flower stems of perennial wallflowers to produce a second crop

- Shorten back the branches of wall-trained ceanothus by 9in, to keep them tight to the wall

- Take the seed heads off your least-favourite aquilegias and allow the favourite colours to self-sow

- Watch for the white, woolly, beech aphid on new hedges and treat with imidacloprid: young hedges can be seriously debilitated, while older hedges survive untreated.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Week 2:

What to do this week:

- Once deutzias finish flowering, prune back the spent stems

- It’s time to take cuttings from garden pinks

- Container-grown citrus plants can be placed outdoors for the summer months

- Tie in the new shoots of climbing and rambling roses

- Remove the old flower stems of hellebores.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Dead-head roses and cut out at the base the flowered stems of bearded irises

- Rotate potted or topiary box and yew, so the sun gets to all sides for even, dense growth

- Nip out the tips of the longer shoots on cistus and halimiums to make them branch and stop them becoming straggly quite so quickly. It lengthens their useful lives a good deal, especially when they are growing in over-rich soil (they like it very lean, mean and dry)

- Cut back brooms (cytisus scoparius, c. x praecox, etc) to stop them becoming top-heavy and unstable. Using secateurs, chop back all last year's whippy shoots by 50-60 per cent. It will look a bit raggedy for a couple of weeks, but it's worth it

- Mildew on honeysuckle and acanthus mollis usually means they are in too hot a position. Fungicide will make sport of the honeysuckle, and you can simply cut the acanthus right down to grow again.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Week 3:

What to do this week:

- Cut back oriental poppies when they finish flowering. Deadhead the spent flowers of young lilac bushes

- Check strawberries and remove any fruits that are showing signs of mould or pest damage

- Red chicory can be sown outside for an autumn crop. Start to complete the harvesting of asparagus spears.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- In dry gardens, grey Euphorbia characias is such a useful shrub. Its spent flower stems need cutting out at the base now, but be careful of the milky sap; it marks the skin and some people are allergic to it. Ideally, cut it down after the seed capsules have ripened and shot their seed (hear them popping in hot sun)

- Lots of dead-heading to do: cut out spent peony heads; cut the first crop of dead heads off osteospermums to keep them flowering well; roses, of course

- To secure a good second crop, cut out the thin flowered stems of helianthemums, back to some promising side-shoots; it’s rather like pruning floppy heathers. Shears do an ugly job; secateurs are best

- Vary the fungicide you use on sickly roses, to avoid immunity

- Level up pots on sloping surfaces with slips of stone; they look so much better and it improves drainage.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Q&A with Jane Owen, Times Online

Week 4:

What to do this week:

- Start harvesting the tubers of early potatoes

- Remove any faded flower spikes of delphiniums

- Protect young brassicas from pigeons

- Sow the seeds of hardy biennials, such as foxgloves – they will flower next year

- Prune back the spent stems of Kolkwitzia amabilis.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Weekend tips:

- Daffodil leaves are thoroughly dead now and you can mow the grass in which they grow without compromising next year’s flowers. Thick, long grass will strain or clog a domestic mower. Better to strim it down first, gradually, and rake off the “hay”; then you can run the mower over the stubble. If the soil is moist, the grass will green up again in two or three weeks

- If perennials are pulled over by rain (have you any canes left in the shed?) get them staked upright as soon as you can. If you leave them lying down the growing tips will pull to the light; when you lift the stems upright the tips will be horizontal. The Anglepoise look

- Much as potted agapanthus like it hot, it does them no good to dry out. If the flowers are allowed to wilt it reduces their life span enormously

- Go round heavily planted containers, lifting up the foliage and seeing if snails are lurking against the sides of the pot. It’s a favourite place

- Don’t let grass grow around the stems and over the roots of young fruit trees (or any other trees for that matter); it seriously reduces their vigour.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Click here to go to January

Click here to go to February

Click here to go to March

Click here to go to April

Click here to go to May

Click here to go to July

Click here to go to August

Click here to go to September

Click here to go to October

Click here to go to November

Click here to go to December

Explore Gardens

• Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

• Chelsea Flower Show

Times recommends

• Here comes the glass sun – garden honours Beatle
• Gardening tips: 10 things to know about Horny Goat Weed or Epimedium
• Diarmuid Gavin shares tips on how make your garden fun and funky