Plant tulips this month as the temperature is cool enough to discourage fungal diseases. Check for blue mould on your bulbs and do not plant them if you discover it. They do require good drainage, so you can mix your soil with gravel if your soil is heavy clay. The end that tapers is the top of the bulb and the flatter end is where the roots emerge – it should be planted this way up. If you are ever in doubt about which way to plant a bulb, plant it sideways and it will find its own way up in the spring. With bulbs, the rule of thumb is to plant with twice as much cover as the height of the bulb, so, for example, if your bulb is 3cm, you want 6cm of earth above it.

If you’ve been thinking about planting a tree in your garden, now is the perfect time of year to be doing that. From about mid-November through to March, bare root trees and hedging plants are available from most garden centres. Bare root trees offer much better value than pot-grown varieties, being simply lifted straight from the ground while dormant ready for planting in a new location. A good tree for winter interest is the paper bark maple (Acer griseum); as its name suggests, the bark peels off the tree and it has a very attractive cinnamon-coloured stem.