August is the month to sit back and enjoy your garden, while the weather allows. Enjoy your home grown vegetables fresh and preserve any surplus crop for the winter: freeze beans and make tomato sauce, jams, pickles and chutney. 

August is also the perfect time to plan for next year. 

Take notes and label your plants 

Make a note of plant successes and start thinking of your planting plan for next year. You might want to introduce a new colour scheme.  For this add details of the name, colour and height of your plants and keep a note of these on labels or on a note book or even a diagram.

Hardy herbaceous perennials  and summer-flowering bulbs

As they will lose their leaves and die down in autumn and winter, label any that you want to remember. Also make a note of any that have become overcrowded and will needs lifting and dividing in the autumn or to be moved to a better site.

Other jobs for August:

• Train and summer prune wisteria and rambling roses.
• Refresh and weed your strawberry patch.
• Prune raspberries.
• Tidy up hedges and shade up topiary.
• Encourage tomatoes to ripen by removing growing tip. 
• Water regularly in dry spells and make plenty fresh water available for wildlife. 
• Beat potato blight and limit it spreading by removing and destroying any affected foliage. Eat tubers from blighted crops as soon as possible.
• Harvest herbs and store them hanging them up to dry in a warm and well ventilated location.