Local conditions

Garden conditions in London.

London gardening happens in courtyards, on balconies and in long, narrow plots — and the city runs a degree or two warmer than the countryside around it, which stretches the season at both ends.

This page uses the SW1A postcode area as a reference point for London, Greater London. Conditions vary street by street — the Gardn app reads your own postcode when you add your garden.

Soil

The ground around London.

We read topsoil texture from the open ISRIC SoilGrids survey, and it was unavailable when this page was generated — so rather than guess, we've left the reading out.

The Gardn app reads the soil picture for your own postcode when you add your garden — street-level rather than town-level.

The year

The year in London.

Frost usually leaves London around 6 April and returns around 19 November — roughly 227 days of open ground between the two, and 31 frost nights across the year.

Rain comes to about 721mm over the same twelve months.

Averaged from ten years of daily records (2015–2024) at the SW1A reference point. A sheltered garden runs milder than the town figure and an exposed one colder — the app reads the difference for your own postcode.

This week

This week in London.

Rain, wind and temperature set the week’s jobs, and they change too fast to print. When this page loads, Gardn fetches a live reading for the SW1A area — how much rain has fallen in the last seven days, how thirsty pots and borders are likely to be, and what the next few days look like.

If the live reading has not appeared, the app carries the same reading — for your own postcode rather than the town’s.

The season

Summer in gardens like these.

Watering is the season’s main job, and the order matters: pots and anything planted this year first, established borders last. Morning or evening watering loses far less to evaporation, and a proper soak twice a week does more good than a light sprinkle every day.

Lawns can largely look after themselves. A browned lawn in a dry spell is resting, not dying — it greens up again when rain returns. Deadheading, on the other hand, pays back all season: most repeat-flowering plants keep going far longer if spent blooms come off.

It is also the season to watch, not just work. Warm weeks bring aphids, mildew and sudden growth in equal measure, and ten minutes of looking closely — under leaves, at new tips — catches most problems while they are still small.

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