LP Gardening Services

23/09/2026

Hi everyone, I’m Mark, your English-speaking gardener in Pau and the surrounding areas. I provide a range of gardening services including, regular lawn mowing/garden maintenance services and I am also available for individual jobs such as hedge trimming, shrub and bush pruning and planting.

I offer expert planting services, including providing help selecting the right plants for your garden, and how to care for them to make your garden flourish. You may already have some plants that need planting or I could get the plants for you.

Quotes are free, and I can organise a time to visit that fits around your working day if needed. You can contact me via WhatsApp on +33 6 40 53 17 12.

16/08/2026

16/08/2026

It’s time to prune your Prunus!

Trees in the genus Prunus include cherry, plum, peach, nectarine, apricot and almond.

Unlike apples or pears, which are generally pruned in winter while dormant, Prunus trees should be pruned in late summer, and winter pruning is strongly discouraged. The main reason for this is disease prevention, although they also do respond differently to pruning from many other deciduous fruit trees.

Pruning Prunus species in late summer lowers the risk of fungal infection, particularly the potentially fatal silver leaf (Chondrostereum purpureum). Prunus species are also vulnerable to bacterial canker. Spores and bacteria can enter and infect fresh pruning wounds, particularly when conditions are cool and wet. In summer, the cuts begin to heal quickly, while dry conditions reduce the opportunity for pathogens to infect the fresh wounds. For this reason, it is best to choose a dry spell for pruning and avoid cutting immediately before wet weather.

Another benefit of summer pruning is that it produces a more restrained response from the tree. Heavy pruning while dormant can stimulate vigorous, upright growth the following spring, resulting in lots of unwanted shoots. Summer pruning, by contrast, helps to control excessive growth and help maintain a more manageable, productive tree.

11/08/2026

There is no denying that this has been a hot, dry summer so far, and many plants have suffered. The grass is mostly yellow and crispy and, for many plants, it’s clear to see the slowdown in growth – even the weeds!

However, it has also been a great opportunity to see which plants do particularly well in these conditions, and this can help shape our views on what to plant and where in the future. For example, in my garden, the lavender has been fantastic this year, flowering so profusely that, from dawn until dusk, it has been covered with various types of bees and butterflies. Other drought-tolerant plants, such as the stonecrop Hylotelephium ‘Herbstfreude’, have also thrived this year, putting on significant growth and are just about to start flowering, continuing the bounty for bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects into autumn. Annuals, including cosmos, sunflowers and zinnias, have also managed the hot, dry weather particularly well, providing a much-needed splash of colour.

The good news is that, in most cases, there’s no need to panic about your grass. It should start to grow again when the rain returns in earnest. In many cases, the grass isn’t dead; it has simply gone dormant to survive the drought. When the grass does start growing again, it may recover unevenly, and there may be some patches of bare ground where individual plants have died. Another thing that can happen is that weeds take advantage of the bare soil, with some recovering more quickly than the grass. If this happens, there is no need to do anything drastic. Wait for a reasonable amount of rainfall and see what comes back. Once the grass has started actively growing again, you can assess its condition and decide whether any further action is needed.

31/03/2026

Flowering in mid to late spring, tulips bring a burst of colour to your garden. Available in a wide variety of colours, the bulbs are best planted from September to November, usually in a full-sun position, and prefer well-drained soil as they can rot in the ground if water-logged.

Plant them in your borders or in containers if you’re short of space. Tulip bulbs can spread and multiply when grown in good conditions, so after a few years your display should be even better!

24/03/2026

Hi everyone, I’m Mark from LP Gardening Services. I provide a wide range of gardening services in Pau and the surrounding areas.
Covering a large area extending to Rébénacq, Orthez, Sévignacq, Pontacq and beyond. If you want to know if I provide services to where you are, please contact me.

28/02/2026

Daffodils, with their vibrant yellow and white blooms, are a delightful addition to any garden. They are best planted in the autumn, from September to November, for a stunning display in early spring. These perennial bulbs typically flower from February and herald the arrival of warmer days ahead. Propagation is simple - once established, they multiply over the years, allowing you to divide them every few years to create new clusters throughout your garden. They come in numerous varieties, showcasing an array of colours beyond the classic yellow - from soft whites to bright oranges and multi-coloured hybrids. Daffodils can brighten up borders, rockeries, or even containers.

25/02/2026

Serving Pau and the surrounding areas. Covering a large area extending to Rébénacq, Pontacq, Monein, Sévignacq and beyond.
If you want to know if I provide services to where you are, please contact me.

29/01/2026

Often considered a nuisance because of their molehills, there are many potential solutions offered online for removing moles from your garden; poison, humane traps or ultrasonic devices, designed to dissuade them from a particular area.

Moles, however, actually provide a lot of benefits in the garden. They feed on garden pests such as slugs and snails, and aerate the soil as they dig their tunnels. So, when we discovered them in our new garden, we decided to try something else – accepting their presence and seeing if we could make the garden work for us all.

Moles are solitary animals. They each create a network of tunnels in which they live and feed, and they will defend this territory from any other mole that comes too close. (This is why killing or removing moles isn’t a simple solution – another mole will simply move into the territory.) When you see a cluster of molehills in your lawn, it therefore means you have just one mole, not a whole army.

The hills are generated as the moles dig, to remove the excess dirt from their tunnels. Once created, the moles will live happily within their network as long as food is plentiful and their tunnels are undisturbed. If something collapses a tunnel, the mole will set about fixing it, usually creating another hill.

We soon discovered that every time we ran over an inhabited area with our ride-on mower, hills would appear the next day. We were obviously disturbing the ground underneath. So, in an area where we were trying to cultivate a flat lawn, we switched to using a hand-mower only. If any hills did appear we carefully scraped away the soil, taking care not to push it back down into the hole.

Within a couple of weeks, the hills had stopped and the mole was living happily below us, showing that it might take a bit of extra work but it is possible to work alongside these little creatures, so that you can both enjoy the garden!