Wood for thought

Planting and caring for trees is an important winter job for gardeners. Growing advice hasn’t changed much over the centuries and most of my suggestions could just as easily have been given by the ancient Greeks. Whether you buy bare root trees from a garden centre or by mail order, you will need to deal with them as soon as possible. If you’re extremely well organised, you’ll have prepared the ground a couple of months ago to let the soil settle down before planting. Believe it or not, some early garden writers urged folk to get the ground ready a full year in advance.