Spalding area's Mark Cox shares what the jobs he would like to be doing if it wasn't for Storm Dennis and Storm Ciara

Blooming heck the weather’s been wild these last few weeks, which has made doing anything in the garden impossible. So I thought I’d better write about what I would have liked to have done had the weather not been quite so biblical.

For many of you, like me, you’ll have Wisteria growing in your garden. Wisteria is a beautiful flowering plant that needs to be pruned twice a year, and now is the perfect time for its first prune.

When the weather eventually breaks start by cutting back any new growth to about 2 or 3 buds. These are the shoots I cut back to 30cm last August. It’s best to do this now while the plant is dormant and leafless.

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Should your Wisteria, like mine, need major pruning to get it back under control for the summer, you need to tackle it now and work methodically. Cut back any old growth or branches that are starting to obscure any windows, or growing into your gutters. You can if needed cut right back to a main stem but again just take a little care.

Should you have removed large well established sections then gently tie a new younger branch into the void against your frame to train the plant to grow into the empty area left behind.

You can of course put your prunings into your compost bin, but remember not to put any diseased wood into your compost bin. I would put them in an incinerator for later.

Moving on, if you have any colourful stemmed shrubs, such as Cornus or Salix, I would also be looking to give these a trim whilst I’m in the cutting mood.

Just a word of note though, you really only need to start hard pruning established shrubs. So if your Cornus, etc, is younger than three- years-old I would leave it until it reaches that age.

Cut all the stems back to about 7cm or 3 inches above the ground.

To ensure good strong growth, I would advise that you apply a good quality all-purpose fertiliser to your shorn shrubs such as Growmore.

Remember when you do incinerate your garden waste wait for a good dry day with not too much wind and try not to light it when your neighbour's washing is hanging on the line.

Even Fabreese will struggle to mask that smell.

Hopefully next week I’ll be actually able to get out into the garden and get some work done!