WE are finally looking at a slightly drier weekend.

It has been a wet autumn and winter which has caused problems for a lot of gardeners around the country.

It doesn’t matter if you are an amateur or a professional, the excessive amounts of falling and standing water has affected the growing abilities of even the hardiest plants.

Hopefully I can give you some tips and advice on how to revive your gardens.

Puddles in your beds and borders are the most noticeable results of all the rain, which means your favourite shrubs and plants have been scuba diving and most likely drowning throughout the winter.

If this has happened you could try digging out the plant then check it over for any damage, if you can, prune it back a bit, removing any dead or damaged branches to give it more of a chance of producing stronger growth.

Depending on the size of plant you could pot it up into a pot of fresh compost and let it grow in that for a season giving it time to form new, healthy growth.

While that is happening the bed will need some work to make it an area for growing plants again.

The first thing to do is give the bed a fork over to open up the surface area, hopefully this will get rid of the settled water, after that you will have to incorporate some fresh growing medium, whether it’s compost or top soil, as the waterlogging will have ruined the soil structure.

You may need to add horticultural grit or sand to the bed to aid with the aeration problem.

This area should be left forked over and empty for a while to make sure the water problem doesn’t return, if the area starts to dry out properly you could begin to re-plant.

It is important to add fertiliser at this time, either granules or well rotted manure as the water will have washed all of the nutrients out of the bed.

As well as beds, puddling can be a problem on lawns too.

A lot of people don’t think of grass as being a plant therefore it doesn’t suffer any long term effects from weather conditions.

Although it is a hard wearing, resilient plant there is only so much water grass can take without being affected.

The same waterlogging problems can occur for your shrubs.

Spiking the affected area with a garden fork to open up the surface could be enough to clear the standing water, if this works you should put fresh top soil into the holes to give the grass roots a boost hopefully letting it revitilise itself.

If, however, the water doesn’t seep away you may have to remove the affected area of grass and do the same repair work I mentioned before in your beds and borders.

Containerised plants have been affected by the excess rain too.

You will find that the pots are filled with water that doesn’t drain away and the plants may have died or are looking very sorry for themselves.

The best way to solve this is to empty out the containers, saving any plants that are salvageable and starting again.

It is important to clean the pots to stop any pests and diseases caused by stagnant water being passed to the new ones, you may also find that the drainage holes have been blocked up or need to be enlarged. When filling up again always use fresh compost with fertiliser mixed through to give your plants the best start.

You could also add larger stones, crocks or broken polystyrene trays to the bottom of the pot when filling to aid the drainage.

Finally, it is a good idea to use pot-feet or bricks to raise the pots off the ground letting fresh air circulate and water to drain away.