Gardening tips and advice: August 2025

Bees and butterflies continue their busy work among the flowers and hydrangea blooms add a soft hue to the shadier parts of the gardens. It’s a time to enjoy what the season has to offer, while giving the garden a little thoughtful care to keep it thriving through the heat. 

So whether you’re pruning in the shade or planting in the early evening cool, here are our tips for keeping your garden flourishing this August. 

After an unusually dry June and July, and with hosepipe bans now in place in some regions, it’s more important than ever to use water carefully and make every drop count. At Furzey, we’ve been focusing on watering only the plants that need it most using water-efficient methods like irrigation bags around young trees to deliver moisture directly to the roots. 

If your garden is feeling the strain too, try watering early in the morning or late in the evening, using collected rainwater where possible. Prioritise plants that are showing signs of stress, drooping leaves or faded growth, and let well-established borders fend for themselves where you can.  

Looking ahead, it’s worth thinking about planting more drought-tolerant varieties that can cope better with dry spells. Plants like lavender, perovskia (Russian sage), salvias, achillea, sedum, eryngium, and ornamental grasses like stipa or festuca not only thrive with less water but bring beauty and structure to the garden throughout the summer. 

Every garden is different, but with a few thoughtful choices and habits, it’s possible to keep your space thriving.  

Eucryphia Nymansay in full flower on top lawn

A little deadheading now can go a long way in keeping the colour coming. Snip away faded blooms from dahlias, penstemons and salvias to encourage fresh growth and more flowers. Just remember: don’t deadhead hydrangeas or any plants with seed heads that birds will enjoy later. 

Now’s the time to lightly prune wisteria, cutting back the long, whippy shoots of summer growth to five or six leaves. At Furzey we have recently been pruning our wisteria tunnel to give it a good tidy and to encourage strong flowering buds for next spring. Deutzia and other early-summer flowering shrubs, such as philadelphus, can also be pruned now, cut back the flowered stems to a healthy pair of buds and remove a few of the oldest stems at the base to encourage fresh new growth. 

If you grow rambling roses, August is the ideal time to prune once they’ve finished flowering. Remove one or two older stems at ground level and tie in strong new shoots to provide structure and flowers for next year. Climbing roses can also be tidied at this stage – deadhead, tie in any loose growth and trim back flowered side shoots by a third to keep their shape. 

August is a rewarding month for kitchen gardeners, with harvests coming thick and fast. If you’re growing sweetcorn, tomatoes, runner beans or courgettes, pick them regularly to keep plants productive and avoid gluts. Tomatoes benefit from having lower leaves removed to improve airflow and ripening. It’s also a good time to sow quick crops like lettuce, rocket and radish, they’ll grow happily in pots or small beds for late summer picking. You might also consider sowing spring onions or turnips now for a slightly later harvest as the weather cools.

And if your garden is producing more than you can eat, don’t let it go to waste, freeze chopped herbs in ice cube trays, turn ripe tomatoes into passata or chutney, or share spare courgettes with friends and neighbours. A good harvest is always better when it’s shared. 

Sophora japonica – Japanese pagoda tree in flower

We caught up with Robert, a supported gardener at Furzey, who has been working hard harvesting in the cottage garden: 

 ‘We’ve been harvesting quite a lot! We’ve been picking broad beans, then we harvested the rhubarb, and I think we’ve taken some of the tomatoes’. 

Robert and the team have been picking tomatoes for the tea rooms to use in their salads – a delicious perk of growing vegetables in the cottage garden: 

‘We thought it would be quite nice for them too, instead of ordering, and you don’t know how long they have been, here they’re fresh from the garden’.  

August is a great time to divide certain herbaceous perennials that have finished flowering or are starting to outgrow their space. Plants like hardy geraniums, Astrantia, Alchemilla and primulas can be gently lifted, split and replanted – giving tired clumps a new lease of life and creating extra plants for your borders or to share. Make sure to water them well afterwards and keep them shaded until they settle in. 

It’s also the perfect moment to take softwood or semi-ripe cuttings from salvias, penstemons, fuchsias and pelargoniums. Use healthy, non-flowering shoots about 7–10cm long, trim just below a leaf node, and pop them into a gritty compost mix. Keep them in a bright, sheltered spot out of direct sun, ideally under a plastic bag or cloche to maintain humidity. 

And finally, keep an eye on any self-sown seedlings from foxgloves, honesty or aquilegia. These can be carefully lifted and moved if they’ve landed in an awkward spot – a gentle job that makes a big difference come spring. 

If you’ve got a wild patch or meadow, now is a good time to gut it back. Rake up the clippings to allow light to reach the soil, this helps with self-seeding and encouraging next year’s flowers. If your lawns are like ours at Furzey, they will almost definitely be a little parched. Let them rest and they’ll soon bounce back with the autumn rains. If you need to mow, keep it light and have your mower blades set to high. 

August offers some lovely moments at Furzey. The hydrangeas are full and luminous in soft pinks and blues.  Oxydendrum arboreum (the sorrel tree) starts to flower, bringing white bell-shaped blooms and hints of early autumn colour, while Eucryphia nymansay is in full flower on the top lawn. Look out for butterflies around the garden and don’t miss our Japanese Pagoda tree in flower in the top border by Furzey House.  

And if you’re visiting with children, don’t miss our Jurassic Furzey kids’ trail – an adventure through the gardens featuring artist-decorated prehistoric creatures hidden among the plants. Trail booklets and binoculars are available for £3 (plus garden entry donation), and the trail runs until the end of the summer holidays. It’s a brilliant way to bring a little wild wonder to your summer visit. 

August might be the month when gardeners begin to wind down, but at Furzey, we find it’s the perfect time to reconnect – with the garden, with nature, and with each other. A little care now will bring beauty well into the season ahead. And if you need a moment of stillness, you know where to find us – tucked in the New Forest, ready to welcome you in.  

This article originally appeared as the monthly In The Garden column in the Lymington Times, buy the paper on the second Friday of every month to read the next column first.