At last we're officially in the first month of spring and already the garden is slowly awakening from its winter slumber.

So if you've missed being out in the garden this month you'll find that there's plenty to be getting on with such as early sowing, planting, and some pruning. If you read my gardening column last week, I gave advice on how and what to prune around this time of the year.

Up until the end of March you can plant bare-rooted deciduous plants such as trees, shrubs, roses and hedging plants. Bare-rooted means that these plants are grown directly in soil and not in pots.

However, remember that such bare-rooted plants must be planted as soon as you get them home and if the roots have dried out a bit, soak them in a bucket of water for about an hour.

Prepare the soil well, incorporating organic matter, which will help to improve the structure and drainage of the soil and also to help the roots get established.

You can start preparing the soil for your flowerbeds in readiness to plant out hardy annuals towards the end of this month, so sprinkle some fertiliser.

The winter rains will certainly have washed away some of the goodness and it's important to put this back.

Around now, some clump forming perennials can get too congested, so it is a good time to dig them up and divide them.

You can replant them elsewhere in the garden, getting more plants for free, or if you haven't got the room in your garden, then you can always swap plants with a fellow gardener.

Also, now is a good time to plant new hedging for the garden, as it will get established with this new growing season.

Hardy summer flowering bulbs such as lilies can be planted out now to give you some wonderful welcome colour and scent in amongst your planted borders.

A good idea is to plant bulbs into pots so that you can move them around to wherever you have a bare patch in the garden, and put them out of the way after they have flowered.

If you haven't sown plants before, then have a go this year. Check out seeds at your local garden centre or supermarket and have a go at sowing some.

This is a wonderfully cheap way of getting lots of plants for your garden.

Even if you don't have a greenhouse, start your seedlings off indoors in seed trays and you'll soon be able to give your garden a boost of colour this summer.

For further information and advice, don't forget to visit my website at www.gardendesigner.co.uk