Published: 22 March 2026 - Watch on YouTube
Hello and welcome back. I'm Aga, and this is my garden here in Chichester, West Sussex. We have had a lovely run of warm, sunny days this past week, though the nights are still cold, with the thermometer in my shed showing close to zero on one of them. It felt like the right moment for some slow, calm work in the early spring sun, so I finally finished a job that has been hanging over me for weeks and then pottered about tidying the borders.
I can finally say that my veg patch is finished. I have tackled the raspberry roots, and it was a massive dig out. I would love to say I will never have to do it again, but honestly some of it will probably still pop up randomly. This was probably the biggest mistake I have made in the garden so far.
I planted my raspberries along the fence between the fence and the veg patch, and little did I know the roots would spread all over the kitchen garden. Canes started popping up everywhere in my raised beds, which is not what they are for. So I shifted all of the soil and went on a hunt for the roots. One was sitting shoulder deep below the level of the raised bed, and the whole bed was basically infested. I dug one hole after another, following the roots wherever they took me, shifting soil and gravel from hole to hole. The bucket of roots I pulled out was insane.
In the end I decided I was done with it. I am quite sure there are still roots in there, but I do not want to deal with it any more this season. So I levelled the soil and mulched the raised bed with well-rotted horse manure. It is going to rest now until I plant my tomatoes, cucumbers and beans. Now that I have the allotment, I will grow most of the bigger veg there, and this space will be for the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and maybe a few other bits.
While I was tidying up and covering the holes, I noticed a brand new raspberry cane popping out right from the base of my Clematis. I thought, this is not happening. I dug out as much as I could without ruining the Clematis roots, because the cane was coming up from the middle of it.
So please do not do this to yourselves. If you ever wonder where to plant raspberries, do not put them anywhere near raised beds or anything else you are actively growing. They do a hostile takeover and they have no mercy. On a happier note, I am very glad to see that Clematis finally showing big signs of life. It was originally planted where the Camellia is now, on the other side of the picket fence, but it was too dark there. I moved it to this sunny spot and it looks like it is taking on at last.
My plan for today was lighter work, starting with trimming the Erigeron, which really needed a proper haircut. Even as I cut back the old stems from last season, I could see it is already releasing plenty of little flower heads, which is lovely to see in the middle of March.
If you do not have Erigeron in your garden, I can highly recommend it. It is a gracious, generous plant and a magnet for bees and pollinators, and it grows nicely in almost any conditions. You often see it growing out of the cracks in old stone walls, like the tall walls around Arundel, and it looks very charming. I bought three little plug plants in my first year of gardening, which was only three years ago, and I have divided them several times since, so you can multiply it for free. You do not even have to tidy it if you would rather not, as the old stems eventually break off on their own.
Around the borders the Brunnera Jack Frost is looking gorgeous. I have three of those and would highly recommend them for shady areas, as they look really pretty in early spring. There are new shoots on the young pear tree too, and a climbing rose called Pilgrim that I have had since last year and still needs sorting out. Everything is coming to life.
One thing has me puzzled. Something is seriously eating the leaves of my alliums. Ali from My Rusty Garden recently mentioned something nibbling her lily of the valley, and mine are getting chewed too. It does not look like slug damage, as slugs tend to nibble in the middle, and I do not really have rabbits or squirrels here, so I am not sure what it is.
I have been wanting to remove the ivy from this border for a while, because it is spreading way too much. It has grown down over the grass and is making a bare patch, and the roots are setting everywhere. The trouble is there is a rose growing right in there, Queen of Sweden, and I did not want to disturb its roots, or the other plants nearby.
The ivy really did not want to come out. I had left my fork at the allotment, which did not help, so in the end I had to cut some of the roots and rip it out. In its place I will plant some annual flowers along the edge, probably petunias in plug plants, to give that little waterfall effect over the border. I did try to propagate supertunia cuttings back in the winter, but they all died quickly, which was no surprise really, as it was the wrong season for taking cuttings from an annual.
I had lifted and divided a perennial in the winter and feared I might have killed it, but when I checked it over there were a few stems with fresh new side shoots. It is alive, so I cut away all the dead wood and planted it back in exactly where it was before, with plenty of well-rotted manure to give it new nutrients. We can only hope for the best with plants, so I try not to worry.
The best surprise was finding my first Dahlia sprouting in the border, most likely Norwegian Glory, with new shoots coming out. I was not sure the ones I left in the ground had made it through what was a surprisingly cold winter, so I am really happy. I also mulched the roses, including Gabriel Oak, and the verbena that I cut back hard over winter, which is all growing nicely. The thyme is looking messy, and someone in the comments suggested a perennial geranium there instead, which I think would look lovely against the purple verbena, so I may well do that.
I fed the pear trees in pots as well. This one is Concord, the one with yellow leaves in autumn, and there is a younger Conference on the patio too. It has used up so much compost that the roots are showing at the top, so I want to mulch it with some wood chip to keep the moisture in over summer. The bag is sitting behind the shed in what I call spider land, which I do not go into, so I will send my husband for it.
I realised how long this video was getting and I still had not done any of the dahlia or bulb planting I had hoped to, so I will save that for another video. I did commit to a big purchase of new dahlia tubers from Farmer Gracy, which is a recommendation and not an ad. The new ones are White Aster, Rhubarb and Custard, Totally Tangerine, Salmon Runner, Golden Sceptre, Sylvia, Dark Spirit and Polka. I also picked up four gladioli varieties: Blushing Look, Rusty Chestnut, Great Queen Elizabeth and Black Star. Some of the gladioli are already started off in modules, since the allotment was still too boggy to plant them out.
It was one of those slow, calm days in the garden where nothing goes quite to plan, the ivy fights back and the raspberries refuse to admit defeat, but the sun is out and everything is quietly coming back to life. That is my favourite kind of early spring day. I would love to know what is growing in your garden at this stage, and if you have any suggestions for mine, do leave me a comment, as I always enjoy those conversations. Thank you for spending a bit of your day here with me.
Tags: #SpringGardening #RaspberryRoots #Mulching #DahliaTubers #CottageGarden #MyWindyGarden