Spring is just around the corner and there are plenty of things you can be doing in the garden in readiness:

• Chit seed potatoes ready for planting (allow them to start sprouting shoots to give them a head start when planted)
• Prepare vegetable seed beds by digging over and raking to create a fine tilth. It’s now time to start sowing vegetable seeds. At this time of year they need protection; sow them in a greenhouse, a polytunnel, or under cloches
• Put netting over fruit and vegetable crops to protect them from birds
• Prune winter-flowering shrubs that have finished flowering
• Cut back ornamental deciduous grasses such as pampas grasses and stipa
• Lift and divide snowdrops and replant the divided bulbs
• Prune wisteria
• Cut or prune hardy evergreen hedges and renovate overgrown deciduous hedges. Before starting work, make sure there are no nesting birds in the hedge
• Prune conservatory climbers
• Prune free-standing fruit trees and bushes; apples, pears