Out and about to keep the garden ticking over

Collect fallen leaves that gather between rose bushes, shrubs and trees and especially those that are trying to smother low-growing plants, such as aubretia, lewisia, sedum, thyme and violets.

If autumn leaves are left on these plants for any length of time, you can be sure that slugs and snails that will ruin their foliage.

Instead of leaving leaves where they fall, collect them up and store in empty compost bags for a year or more and you will have some very valuable leafmould that can be dug into soil in future years.

There's just about finish planting tulips in borders with some of the dwarf species such as 'Stresa' (a red and yellow water-lily type) or 'West Point' (a rich yellow lily-flowered type).

To protect the emerging leaves of tulips while they are still below ground, it will pay to water the patch where they're planted with a liquid slug killer.

Continue to cut back herbaceous plants such as Michaelmas daisies (Aster), cone flowers (Rudbeckia and Echinacea) and phlox as they die back. Compost all the plant material other than foliage that has been badly affected by mildew.

Winter is a good time to cut down unwanted trees and saplings as there is less potential to damage the rest of the flower garden.

And it's time to give some protection to marginal plants that may struggle to survive bad winter weather.

As many gardeners found in 2010's winter, marginal plants such as penstemons, bottle brush bush (Callistemon)

and young ceanothus do not easily survive really cold spells when frosts are persistent and hard.

To give extra protection to the roots of these plants add a 10-15cm (4-6in) mulch layer of any left-over compost.