Gardening expert Bunny Guinness has shared essential winter tasks including mulching and planting vegetables – while warning it ‘can be risky’ to leave bulb planting until January
Robin Cottle Assistant Editor Trendswatch
15:39, 20 Dec 2025
An expert urged gardeners to mulch (stock)(Image: Getty Images)
British gardeners have been urged to complete one crucial task before the end of January, according to landscape gardener Bunny Guinness from Gardener’s Question Time. She recommends that keen gardeners should carry out mulching during the remainder of December or throughout January.
Mulching involves applying a layer of material – such as bark, compost, straw or wood chips – over the soil surface. This practice offers numerous advantages for your garden, including moisture retention, weed suppression, soil temperature regulation and nutrient enrichment as the mulch decomposes.
It also serves as a protective layer, minimising water loss and insulating roots from temperature extremes, whilst gradually nourishing the soil as organic mulches break down. Bunny identifies this as one of the essential tasks to undertake during the coldest winter months.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she explained: “Mulching is a key job at this time of year. This year, I have plenty of top soil to use, taken from the old patch of lawn that I stripped back after killing off the grass.
Bunny Guinness offered some advice to gardeners(Image: ITV)
“I will top up my raised vegetable beds with it to increase the mineral content of the soil. Having put on various organic mulches for the past 40 years – bark, digestate, homemade compost and leaf mould – I am hoping to balance up the proper ‘soil’ element,” reports the Express.
“It will be interested to see whether my yields are improved. Elsewhere, in my ornamental borders, I am putting on a good 50mm layer of bark mulch, and my more tender plants like dahlias and cannas will get 100mm or more, to keep them snug from the colder frosts.”
Bunny is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardener’s Question Time and frequently exhibits at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where she has secured six gold medals.
Beyond the significance of mulching, there are several other tasks she undertakes in the garden throughout winter.
Mulching is a crucial job at this time of year (stock)(Image: Getty Images)
One such task is planting vegetables, and she cautions British gardeners that “it’s not too late to plant”.
She explains: “My vegetable beds are best if kept full of plants: it helps stop the heavy rain from leaching all the goodness from the soil, feeds the family, and keeps the soil structure in better health.
“My broad beans and onion sets are in now, but it’s not too late to plant. I sow all my beans inside and plant out only after they have three or four leaves.”
Additional tasks that Bunny aims to complete during the colder winter months include ordering seeds, constructing shelter for more delicate plants and repositioning plants to fill bare patches.
She also cautioned that leaving bulb planting until January “can be risky”.
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