After fifty years of garden landscaping in Surrey — designing, building, and maintaining gardens across the county — we’ve seen every version of the annual spring checklist. “20 Essential Spring Tasks.” “Everything You Need to Do Before April.” The lists are long, the tone is urgent, and the implication is clear: if you don’t do all of this, your garden is doomed.
Most of it is recycled advice that’s been circulating for decades without anyone asking whether it still holds. Some of it is genuinely useful. Some of it is tradition dressed up as necessity. And some of it actively wastes your time.
We know what spring preparation actually matters and what you can comfortably ignore. Here’s what we’ve learned.
What Makes a Real Difference
Soil assessment before you plant anything
This is the single most overlooked spring task. Before you buy a single plant, understand what your soil is doing. Is it waterlogged from winter rain? Is it compacted? What’s the structure like?
In Surrey, this matters more than most general guides acknowledge. Soil conditions here vary significantly — heavy clay around parts of Woking and Guildford behaves very differently from the sandier soils further south. Clay soils take longer to warm up in spring, stay wetter for longer, and shouldn’t be worked while they’re still cold and sticky. Walking on saturated clay compacts it, damaging the structure you need for healthy root growth through the rest of the year.
The practical test is straightforward: pick up a handful of soil and squeeze it. If it forms a tight, shiny ball that holds its shape, it’s too wet to work. Wait. There’s no calendar date that tells you when your specific soil is ready — it depends on your site, your drainage, and what the winter has done.
Pruning — but only what needs it, when it needs it
Spring pruning advice tends to be blanket guidance: “prune your roses in March,” “cut back all your grasses.” The reality is more nuanced.
Late-flowering shrubs that bloom on new wood — things like buddleia, lavatera, and some hydrangeas — do benefit from hard pruning in early spring. You’re encouraging fresh growth that will carry this year’s flowers.
But spring-flowering shrubs — forsythia, early viburnums, flowering currants — should be left alone until after they’ve bloomed. Pruning them now removes this year’s flower buds. It’s a common mistake, and an unnecessary one.
Ornamental grasses are worth cutting back before new growth emerges, but timing matters. Too early and you remove the winter structure that’s been protecting the crown. Too late and you’re cutting into new shoots. Late February to mid-March is usually right for Surrey, depending on the season.
The principle: know what you’re cutting and why. If you can’t explain the reason for a particular pruning cut, don’t make it.
Dealing with what winter left behind
Winter in Surrey means waterlogging, wind damage, and occasionally frost damage to borderline-hardy plants. Walk your garden properly before you start any spring work and assess what’s happened.
Damaged branches should be cleaned up — torn wood is an entry point for disease. But don’t rush to dig out plants that look dead. Many perennials and even some shrubs that appear lifeless in late winter will come back from the roots once the soil warms. Give them until May before making a decision. We’ve seen plants written off in March that were thriving by June.
Waterlogged areas need attention. If water is sitting on the surface or the ground is permanently boggy in places it wasn’t before, that’s telling you something about your drainage. It may be a seasonal issue, or it may indicate a problem that needs addressing before it worsens.
Lawn care — less than you think
The lawn care industry would have you scarifying, aerating, overseeding, feeding, and applying moss treatment all in March. For most Surrey lawns, this is overkill.
What actually matters in spring: wait until the grass is actively growing (usually mid to late March in Surrey, sometimes later), then start with a high cut to tidy things up. Don’t scalp it — cutting too short too early stresses the grass and gives weeds an advantage.
If your lawn has significant moss, the moss is a symptom, not the disease. It’s telling you about shade, drainage, compaction, or low fertility. Treating the moss without addressing the underlying cause means it’ll return. Scarifying can help, but timing is important — do it when the grass is growing strongly enough to recover, not when it’s barely woken up.
Feeding can wait until April or May when the grass is in active growth and can actually use the nutrients. February feed is largely wasted — cold soil means minimal uptake.
What You Can Skip
Digging over empty beds “to let the air in.” If you have decent soil structure, unnecessary digging disrupts the biological activity that’s already working in your favour. The mycorrhizal networks, earthworm channels, and soil organisms that support healthy plant growth are all damaged by turning the soil over for no reason. If soil is compacted, address the compaction. If it isn’t, leave it alone.
Buying and planting too early. Garden centres stock spring plants early because that’s when people are eager to buy. But planting tender things into cold soil is a gamble in Surrey, where late frosts can persist into April and occasionally May. Hardy plants are fine. Anything tender — dahlias, cannas, tender salvias — should wait until the risk of frost has genuinely passed, not just until you’re impatient.
Following a national calendar. Generic spring guides are written for an average that doesn’t exist. Surrey’s microclimate varies — a sheltered garden in Weybridge may be two or three weeks ahead of an exposed plot on higher ground near Chobham. Pay attention to your garden, not to a published schedule.
The One Thing That Matters Most
If spring preparation could be reduced to a single principle, it would be this: observe before you act. Walk the garden. Look at what’s happening. Understand the conditions before you intervene.
The gardens we maintain across Surrey that perform best through the year aren’t the ones that had the most done to them in March. They’re the ones where the right things were done at the right time, based on what the garden actually needed rather than what a checklist said.
Spring is a season of opportunity, not obligation. Spend it wisely.
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Montrose Landscapes provides ongoing garden aftercare and maintenance across Surrey — including seasonal preparation tailored to your garden’s specific conditions. Talk to us about your garden if you’d like expert care year-round.
