Events in October:

RHS 2007 Le Manoir Autumn Lunch and Garden Tour Offer - 1 October 2007, Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, Oxfordshire. Details

Autumn's Harvest - 3 October 2007, RHS Garden Wisley Hall, Surrey. Details

Lawn Repair and Restoration - 6 October 2007, Capel Manor College, London. Details

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...

Inspirational Autumnal Gardening - 13 October 2007, Newton Rigg College , Cumbria. Details

Autumn Colour in the Garden - 21 October 2007, RHS Garden Wisley Hall, Surrey. Details

October's Reader Queries answered by Stephen Anderton, The Times. Click here to read

Week 1:

Weekend tips:

- There are wonderful bargains to be had in end-of-season or discontinued-line pots. If you are prepared to store them till next season, buy now. I have just bought three £90 monsters for £14.99 each, perfect quality

- Clean down and disinfect your greenhouse, standing the plants outside. Clean the outside of the roof in particular with a long, soft brush, to maximise the winter light levels inside

- Dry off baskets and pots of tuberous begonias under cover until the stalks fall away. Store the tubers as they are, or dry and cleaned of soil

- Once blackened by frost, dahlias can be lifted, dried off and stored in a cool, dark, airy, frost-free place. Storing them in dry sand stops them shrivelling. Tough varieties can be left in the ground and mulched

- As light levels fall on window sills, keep houseplants rather drier, to slow down growth during the winter

- Keep potted cyclamen cool and as light as possible.

(Steven Anderton, The Times)

Week 2:

Weekend tips:

- Some perennials poke through very early in the spring, and if you need to divide them, now is not a bad time. Try Aconitum (monkshood), Eremurus (foxtail lily) and Asphodeline (king’s spear). Remember Eremurus have fragile starfish roots

- When moving evergreens after such a dry season, throw several buckets of water on them a few days beforehand to ensure the rootball is moist

- It’s a good time to plant all evergreens, but make sure that you keep them watered for a couple of months, especially in windy weather, until they can put out new roots

- Remember to close down the greenhouse at night, but open it wide in the morning to prevent soaring temperatures and disease

- Divide old clumps of wiry-rooted Pacific Coast irises into small clumps (Iris douglasiana, innominata, etc). Try them in sunny semi-woodland, at the foot of rhododendrons.

(Steven Anderton, The Times)

Week 3:

Weekend tips:

- Miserable, dry soil under trees? Buy and plant some of the marbled Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’. Established clumps will be carrying their drumsticks of red berries now, and you can divide a good clump into dozens of offsets

- What is so flamboyant at this time of year as a clump of nerine bulbs, like small, lipstick-pink agapanthus? Divide them now after flowering, putting them in hot, sunny, dry soil, with the snout of the bulb just under the surface. All shades of pink and white are for sale

- Prune back to 6in any runts in first-year beech, hornbeam, hawthorn and privet hedges.They will then bush out and catch up

- Making new borders next year on clay soil? Dig them over roughly now, adding old compost as you go

- Complete the trimming of evergreen hedges and topiary soon now, to give you some crisp winter lines.

(Steven Anderton, The Times)

Week 4:

Weekend tips:

- While the weather is kind, finish clipping evergreen hedges and topiary to leave clean lines on which the autumn and winter sun can play. Using secateurs, shorten back to their base any shoots that are starting to run up the hedge. This helps keep the hedge slimline and also avoids it splaying out in the long term

- Start preparing new borders to be planted next year: dig them over to a few spades’ depths, taking out weed roots and adding coarse, old compost or fallen leaves. If making a bed from lawn, lay the turf upside-down in the bottom of the bed, but only if it doesn’t contain perennial weeds

- Look out for weak specimens in recently planted hedges of beech, hornbeam, thorn, holly and privet. Cut weaker growth down to 20cm to make them shoot harder and to help them fill out around the bottom.

(Steven Anderton, The Times)

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