The garden is nothing if not colourful this month, what with the day-glo colours of late summer dazzling beneath brilliantly-coloured butterflies. Keep it looking gorgeous with our list of jobs to be getting on with this month:
General tasks:
Keep up with the harvest, whether it's fruit, vegetables or cutting flowers, as regular picking keeps the produce coming
Clear away early annuals once they've finished flowering: you can plant standby gap-fillers like dahlias in their place
Ornamental garden:
Cut back flopped stems to a neat clump at the base: they'll bounce back with a mound of pretty, fresh foliage
Remove diseased leaves from roses, picking them up from the ground where they fall too so fungal diseases don't spread
Prune rambling roses after flowering, removing flowered shoots close to the ground then tying in new ones in their place
Kitchen garden:
Summer train fruit trees such as cordon apples and pears by snipping back side shoots to 7.5cm, encouraging plenty of short fruit-bearing spurs
Sow one last batch of parsley to crop in late autumn: cover it with a cloche and you can keep picking till the first frosts.
Pinch out the tops of tomato plants once they reach the greenhouse roof so they concentrate on ripening fruit.
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