My new house has a mature garden - help!

[Fizzgig]

Our new house is a victorian terrace with a beautiful mature garden and I don't want to be faced in a few months time with a few bunches of brown twigs! There are some rose bushes and two forsythia and a hydrangea and I'm not sure of what sort of 'pruning' I need to do with these. I've got lots of dead heads on the hydrangea but am loathe to just chop them all off incase I do something wrong! Any advice would be gratefully received. Many thanks.

[Ethel]

What an excellent opportunity to get to know your neighbours. People love to help, especially when you are asking advice.

Get to the library and borrow some books - the more basic the better. See if your library rents dvds and videos - the Alan Titchmarsh series 'How to be a gardener' has been released and offers excellent advice.

Enjoy your new home and garden. Good luck.

[Thunderbird+]

The vidio's dvd's and referance books is good advice,as you really need to know the types of roses etc you are dealing with. But to get you started, basicly, Roses are usually pruned in the summer after flowering,remove any dead wood and always prune to an outward facing bud, this applies to bush, standarb, or ramblers.

Forsythia, can be pruned after flowering but best done when in full leaf.

Hydrangia, Remove dead "mopheads" and dead wood. H. paniculata grandiflora is the only one that requires hard prunning. Good Luck.

[Fizzgig]

Many thanks. I'll go and purchase an Alan Titchmarsh book right away as I don't want to kill anything! It all looks so lovely, but coming from a gravel and paving slab container garden to a fully grown one is daunting to say the least! Still, no guts, no glory!! Many thanks again.

[sense4all]

Years ago I saw a study of gardens that compared the results of complete novices without a clue, people who thought they knew what they were doing and professional gardeners. Do you know that keen novices who weren't afraid to have a go at stuff and the professional gardens got very similar results it was the middle group who got the worst results! On this basis I have always had a go and been pleased with the results, It takes a lot to defeat nature. Get out there and get your hands dirty! Forsythia you might need to trim if it is a space filler. You can do something to hydrangea to change the colour of the flower headhttp://www.bluewisteria.co.uk/bluewisteria.htm l?tools/hydrangea_care.html see the link. Be brave you'll enjoy the challenge!