Preparing your holiday home garden for spring

Holiday parks are open and you’re finally able to visit your holiday home frequently again, woohoo! But the garden you planted last year needs a little TLC, or you're simply thinking of ways to spruce up the look of your static caravan. A great option is creating a spring garden.

There are many benefits of having a spring garden, it adds character and colour to your plot, it’s great for the bees and it’s an amazing hobby for your frequent getaways so why not give it a try?

What we cover:

• Best outdoor plants for your spring garden
• Best plants for shaded areas
• Best plants for plant pots
• Best indoor plants
• How to care for your new plants

Best outdoor plants

Spring is the season of blossoming buds so why not brighten up the exterior of your caravan with a nice patch of colourful flowers?

It is the ideal time of year to get in a seed-sowing frenzy laying the groundwork for the summer ahead. For those wanting to surround their holiday home with the natural beauty of cosmos, phacelia or marigolds, now is the time to start planting.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and on a similar note, it is important to remember that the ultimate spring garden doesn’t appear overnight. Spring is a great time to start thinking about what you want in your garden and planning for the year ahead. Bulbs for popular spring favourites such as daffodils and tulips are best planted in early September so need to be planned well in advance.

Below is a list of some of our floral favourites to help spark your imagination when dreaming up your holiday home garden:

• Snowdrops
• Daffodils
• Hyacinth
• Tulips
• Hydrangea
• Black-eyed Susan
• Flamingo Willow tree
• Pieris Forest Flame

Best plants for shaded areas

If you have the space for a garden but the area is covered by shade, don’t worry you can still benefit from a lovely bright garden filled with luscious greenery.

Not all plants are sunseekers. Below is a list of plants that can survive in the shade.

• Foxglove
• Ferns
• First Frost Hosta
• Bleeding Heart
• English Ivy
• Ajuga
• Caladium

Best plants for plant pots to display on your decking or small garden area

Often your holiday home will come sited on hardstanding and surrounded by decking making planting into the ground impossible. There may also be site rules that prohibit you from planting into the ground and making modifications to your plot. This does not however mean that you cannot enjoy the pleasures of gardening at your static caravan.

Another way of adding greenery to the exterior of your holiday home is having a variety of potted plants. These can be dotted around your decking or beside your holiday home itself.

There are plenty of options you have when using plant pots as there are different sized plant pots and different plants available depending on the space you have and a variety of vibrant patterns and colours before you even start looking into the plants themselves. You could even make a nice display with a mix of different sized plants and pots.

Our top tip is to avoid plants that climb as you don’t want them to impact the structural integrity of the cladding of your home.

Here are some of the best plants for plant pots that we’ve found:

• Lilies
• Hostas
• Fuchsia
• Wood Spurge
• Lavender
• European fan palm
• Begonias
• Many Fruit trees (Apples, Cherry, Peach, Orange, Lemon, etc)

Best indoor plants

We understand that a lot of you holiday home owners don’t have the space or opportunity to have your own spring garden area beside your holiday home but that shouldn’t stop you from bringing the outdoors in. We’ve found some of the best indoor plants you can add to enhance your decor.

Having indoor plants can be very beneficial to your health as well as adding decor to your space, they can reduce stress and even improve the quality of indoor air so why not freshen up the look of the decor in your holiday home with a few plants?

Here are some low maintenance plants we’ve found that’d be the perfect addition to your holiday home:

• Philodendron
• Zanzibar Gem (ZZ plant)
• Chinese evergreen (aglaonema)
• Cactus - Care tip - Use a cactus soil mix when potting a cactus.
• Peace lily
• Monstera
• Spider Plant - Plant fact - these are particularly great for improving the air quality of indoor air.
• Air Plants - Care tip - submerge air plants into water for 15 mins, shake and dry off excess water, every 2 weeks

Plant care

How to care for most indoor plants

• Use a well draining/chunky soil mix when potting your plants.
• Once a month use house plant food to ensure the plant continues to get all the right nutrients.
• Most of these plants can be watered once every two/three weeks depending on the soil and light. Alternatively, water when the soil has started to dry or the plant starts to droop/curl.
• Place the plants in bright indirect light near any windows available.
• When yellowing leaves start to appear, cut these off.
• For specific plant care please see the care tips above the plant photo.

How to care for outdoor plants

• Planning is key. Do your research on the best time of year to plant and also on any key tips on how to keep them as healthy as possible.
• For outside plants, prune to keep plants healthy and promote growth, this also keeps them at the size you want for your garden.
• Remember to keep an eye on the weather. Although the April showers will keep your plants well hydrated, on those warmer weeks remember to top them up with a watering can.

Let us know how you get on with planting your gardens, in whatever way that may be, and send us some photos and tag us in any garden posts on social media!