The Chelsea Chop is a pruning technique carried out on late-flowering perennials. These are flowers that come back year after year, and typically bloom August and later.

Chopping can be used to delay flowering times. If you chop some of your plants and leave others you will be able to give yourself a good spread of flowers over a longer period.

The other reason is to stop plants from growing so tall that they flop over, fall over and/or get damaged in the wind.

Suitable plants include Sedums, tall Asters (michaelmas daisy), tall Rudbeckias & Echinaceas (coneflowers), Leucanthemums, Heleniums & Helianthus, and Phlox.

At the most basic end, two different packs of pansies and violas will fill a couple of baskets for very little money – one plant in the centre, then a mix of four or five around the edge.

Take it up a step with a normal pansy or viola in the centre, surrounded by a couple of trailing Ivy and two or three of the fantastic trailing ‘Cool Wave’ pansies.

You can add more interest by using an evergreen plant as the centrepiece – at Bridge Farm Plants we use young conifers, shrubs, grasses, herbs and heathers – which can all be planted out into the garden afterwards.

Find a gap in the weather to get your garden prepared for spring.
If you haven’t done so already make sure you get out and give Roses, summer-flowering Clematis and fruit bushes their annual prune.