These gardening chores are best done before spring arrives:

Water-garden maintenance

Remove leaf litter from a pond, especially if you have fish. Decomposing leaves can have an adverse effect on water quality. Turn off the pump to make it easier to collect the leaves. While removing the leaves, you can also scoop out algae that may have formed. When you're finished removing the leaves, turn the pump back on.

If weeds have sprouted in the path that surround the water feature, remove them by hoeing or pulling. Never use herbicides near a pond, especially if it contains fish, because nearly all herbicides are toxic to fish. They may also destroy aquatic plants in and around the pond.
Wait to remove or transplant overgrown or misplaced plants in or around the pond until the temperatures are warmer. Late winter is not an ideal time to transplant herbaceous plants, and the water may be too cold or even frozen to work in.

Ornamental grasses
Late winter is the ideal time to cut back ornamental grasses. Although it can be fairly easy to cut back grasses with a pair of pruners, loppers or shears, you can also secure the top growth with a bungee cord or piece of twine and cut grasses back with electric or gas powered hedge trimmers. This method can be particularly useful on cutting back large sized grasses.
 
Vine pruning


Late winter is a good time to prune runaway vines because you can visibly see where the vines are growing and remove them from nearby plants. If you wait until spring has sprung and the leaves are already on the trees and shrubs, you may miss an overgrown vine that could potentially be choking nearby plants. In Paul's case, he is pruning an overgrown wisteria that hasn't bloomed in several years. Although the ideal time to prune wisteria is after it blooms in late spring, he decides to prune his wisteria now because he will be leaving plenty of other branches that can produce flowers.
 
Knockout rose pruning


Paul has some Knockout roses that need to be shaped. Although Knockout roses don't require the same kind of pruning as hybrid teas or floribundas, Paul wants to maintain a more compact shape on his roses. He makes each cut just above an outward facing bud so the new branches that form will grow out from, rather than into, the center of the shrub. With hybrid tea and floribunda roses, you usually cut back all but three canes to about eighteen inches tall. But with Knockout roses, you can leave all the canes intact, and simply head the canes back to limit the overall height of the plant.

Publishers Note: This month’s Urban Garden provided in part by HGTV. Please log on to their site for a full range of later winter garden tips. www.hgtv.com