Spring does not sneak up on a garden. It arrives fast, usually in the same fortnight for every garden in the county, and every gardener's diary fills up at exactly that moment. The gardens that look effortless in May are the ones that got their heavy work done between January and March.
Here is what is worth doing, and booking, before the season kicks off in Lincolnshire, roughly in the order the winter offers it.
January and February: the heavy cutting window
Deep winter is when the biggest jobs are at their easiest and kindest. Deciduous hedges and shrubs are dormant, so hard cutting back now stresses them least, and it all happens before birds start nesting, which from February onwards means checking every hedge before a blade goes near it.
It is also the best time to see a garden's bones. With the leaves down you can tell which hedge has crept a foot wider, which shrubs are crossing and rubbing, and which corner has quietly turned into a bramble project.
- Hedge reductions and reshaping, while the hedge is dormant and empty.
- Cutting back overgrown deciduous shrubs that flower later in the year.
- Clearing brambles, ivy and the corner that got away last summer.
- Winter tidy of beds: old growth out, leaves off the crowns of plants.
February and March: beds and borders
As the worst of the cold passes, borders wake up before lawns do. Getting into them now, while most plants are still small, is far quicker than fighting through them in May.
Mulching is the single best-value job of late winter. A decent layer on cleared, damp soil holds moisture through the dry Lincolnshire summer, keeps weeds down and saves hours of work later. It only works this well if it goes on before the weeds and the dry weather arrive, which is exactly why it belongs on the before-spring list.
- Weed and clear the borders while everything is visible and shallow-rooted.
- Mulch beds while the soil is damp.
- Cut back last year's dead growth on perennials before the new shoots make it fiddly.
- Firm up and redefine bed edges so the whole garden reads sharper.
March: lawn groundwork
The lawn's proper season starts in March with the first high cut, but the set-up work starts just before it. Edges recut while the soil is soft, moss dealt with before it gets its spring surge, and any repairs planned so seed can go down as the soil warms.
If last year ended with the lawn looking tired, this is the moment to decide whether it needs feeding, over-seeding or just a better mowing rhythm, rather than noticing in June that it never really got going. Our lawn care calendar for Lincolnshire covers the month-by-month detail.
Why the booking matters as much as the job
Every garden business works the same season, and demand jumps the first warm week of spring. Book heavy work in deep winter and there is room in the diary to do it at the right moment. Ring in mid April and the right moment is often already gone, for us and for the garden, because jobs like hard hedge cuts and mulching genuinely work better done early.
The same logic applies if you are thinking about a monthly plan. Starting one before the season means the first proper growth arrives with the garden already under control, instead of the plan starting with a rescue.
What can wait until spring proper
Not everything belongs on the winter list, and doing some jobs too early wastes the effort:
- Planting tender plants: a Lincolnshire frost in April is entirely possible, so anything soft waits until the risk fades in late spring.
- Trimming evergreen hedges: light shaping waits for the growing season, and always after a nest check.
- Feeding the lawn: hold off until the grass is visibly growing strongly, usually mid spring here.
- Pruning spring-flowering shrubs: cut them now and this year's flowers go in the green waste. They get done just after they flower.
Sort it, don't just read about it
