Horticulture & Collections
Gardening Tips & Plant Care
Have a question about our collections or plants in your garden? Check out our monthly tips or call the Plant Hotline.
Plant Hotline
Have a question about our plants or the plants in your garden?
Contact the Plant Hotline and a Master Gardener will return your call or email with an answer.
Call 404-888-GROW (4769) or email planthotline@atlantabg.org with your plant questions. Please include your contact information.
Orchid Care Sheets:
January
- Prune summer-blooming shrubs: abelia, althea, peegee hydrangea, St. John’s wort, crape myrtle and chaste tree.
- During dry periods, plant or transplant dormant trees and shrubs.
- Cut back and clean up perennial borders and top dress with aged manure or compost.
- Start cool-season veggies from seed to set out on Valentine’s Day.
February
- Sow cool-season annuals in beds.
- Cut back ornamental grasses and Liriope.
- Plant and prune roses toward the end of the month; good varieties for Atlanta include: Mrs. Oakley Fischer, Knockout, and Old Blush.
March
- Fertilize fescue lawns.
- Divide and move perennials and groundcovers.
- Root-prune difficult-to-move woody plants for fall transplanting.
- Delay planting summer annuals until April.
April
- Select native azaleas when in bloom early this month.
- Finish pruning late-season flowering shrubs.
- Stake perennials before they get too tall.
- Plant tender summer bulbs late this month.
May
- Sod or seed warm-season turfs such as Bermuda, Zoysia or Centipede.
- Weed, then mulch to minimize re-growth of weeds and water loss.
- Weed, fertilize, mulch and water your vegetable garden for big dividends later.
- Separate and transplant hellebore seedlings and water-in thoroughly.
June
- Keep annual flowers dead-headed.
- Fertilize warm-season lawns.
- Prune azaleas after flowering to improve the shape.
- Divide early perennials that have finished blooming.
- Discard spent biennials after scattering seed.
July
- Plant water lilies and lotus in pots of heavy, rich clay soil and mulch with pebbles to keep pond water clean.
- Aquatic plants are heavy feeders, so push fertilizer pellets into the soil bi-weekly.
- Take greenwood cuttings of your best azaleas, forsythia and daphne.
- Replenish organic mulch to slow water loss.
August
- Order fall-blooming crocus and colchicum this month for blooms in October.
- Start seeds of choice cultivars of pansies, foxgloves, and hollyhocks.
- Set out transplants of broccoli, cabbage, and kale for fall harvests.
- Prune and fertilize roses for the flush of bloom expected next month.
- Divide iris and daylilies.
September
- Remove spent annuals.
- Reseed or sod fescue lawns.
- Divide and replant spring and summer blooming perennials.
- Test your garden soil, send to the Cooperative Extension Service in your county, then lime soils as required.
- Container-grown, fall-blooming perennials such as aster, goldenrod and pineapple sage will add color to the autumn garden.
October
- Divide and replant perennials.
- Plant trees and woody ornamental shrubs.
- Plant pansies now for color throughout fall and winter.
- Plant spring-blooming bulbs.
- Restore flower and vegetable gardens by digging in compost before replanting.
November
- Dig and store tender bulbs and tubers.
- Continue to plant trees and woody ornamentals.
- Begin a compost pile with raked leaves.
- This is the ideal planting time to plant balled and burlapped woody ornamentals.
December
- Store hoses and cut off water to outside lines before a hard freeze.
- Mulch all new plantings.
- Add lime now for great vegetables next spring.
- Cut back hardy perennials after frost and clean up perennial bed.