Weekend Work: Time to protect young pea plants

What to do

Protect young pea plants from rabbits, pigeons, slugs, pea weevils and all the other creatures that like peas as much as we do. There is still just time to squeeze in a sowing of a maincrop pea such as 'Ambassador' (Suttons £2.65), high in Vitamin C.

Newly planted-out annuals will need nursing along before they get established. Water and feed them well and protect them from slugs.

Clip hedges such as Leyland cypress and privet regularly to contain growth and prevent them spreading too wide.

Prune overgrown specimens of American currant (Ribes sanguineum), choisya, kerria and exochorda. Take out a third of the stems at ground level.

Keep an eye on the wandering tendrils of clematis and tuck them into supports, well spread out so that the new shoots do not get tangled up. The newest clematis in our garden is the pink 'Bee's Jubilee', which is growing through pig wire tacked to wooden supports.

What to see

This weekend more than 200 communal gardens in London will be flinging open their gates: Eaton Square, Bonnington Square, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, the Royal College of Physicians' Medicinal Garden, the roof garden at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. All will be open for the price of a single £12 ticket. For a full list of open gardens, go to opensquares.org