Peter Dowdall at Chelsea Flower Show (Image: RSVP Live)
As many will have noticed, the sunny weather has finally made a welcome return, prompting countless homeowners to consider how they might spruce up their gardens.
While mowing the lawn is the obvious starting point for some, others are keen to go a step further and introduce a splash of colour. However, one gardening expert has sounded a note of caution.
Peter Dowdall, widely known as The Irish Gardener, has spent more than 30 years working in horticulture, and he warns that people are currently falling into a common trap.
During an exclusive interview with this reporter, he said: “If this is being published in the next week or two, then another common mistake people make at the moment is, particularly with the improvement in the weather, we are in a mad rush to see colour in the garden.
“Run down to the garden centre, get lots and lots of summer bedding plants and put them out straight away. That’s a big mistake.”
Peter Dowdall is known as The Irish Gardener (Image: @the_irish_gardener/Instagram)
BBC Weather forecasts indicate the country can anticipate sunny spells through to next week, when rainfall is expected to return.
While the prospect of vibrant plants complementing a freshly trimmed lawn sounds appealing, Peter explained why rushing ahead could prove problematic.
He said: “With the lovely blue sky days, at the moment, that does mean cold nights. So these plants wouldn’t be, they wouldn’t even be resistant to low temperatures.
“It wouldn’t have to be a frost or zero, even if it is down to two, three, or four, it is too cold for them.
He shares tips on YouTube (Image: @the_irish_gardener/Instagram)
“So a lot of these plants, all of these plants really, would have been grown in artificial conditions, in glass houses, in tunnels, and then you will be buying them in either centrally heated supermarkets or in a projected structure in a garden centre, so that’s why they look good, but they are not ready to go outside straight away.”
For those considering shifting their focus to their lawn instead, Peter likewise advised proceeding with care.
He highlighted a further mistake being made by people purchasing garden centre products such as bags of lawn feed containing both moss killer and weed killer combined.
The specialist warned this was environmentally harmful, resulting in unnecessary chemicals being applied to areas of grass that simply don’t require treatment.
Peter acknowledges that most people head straight to Google with their gardening queries, which is why he has developed a free online tool called Ask Peter.
It draws upon his own 30 years of professional gardening expertise and is designed to assist everyone from complete novices through to more experienced gardeners.
He hopes this will spare homeowners from squandering thousands of pounds on avoidable blunders.
Peter Dowdall shares simple gardening tasks online (Image: @the_irish_gardener/Instagram)
He recently said: “I know from working 20-odd years in retail garden centres, when customers walk into garden centres, you can see they’re just nervous. They don’t know all the names, and they’re put off by the terms.”
The expert — who confirmed the tool is available on his website theirishgardener.com — hopes this enables people to seek advice without any sense of embarrassment before having a go at gardening themselves.
He added: “It’s intended to say, ‘Okay, what you need for your lawn is an organic kind of biochar-based lawn food that weed controls’, so you can go to the garden centre and know what you’re looking for.”
Comments are closed.