There is a wistful softness about golden October, a period that can produce some of our most congenial weather in which to enjoy the less urgent jobs of autumn such as lawn raking! Highly meditative if you allow yourself to be lost in its tranquil rhythm, or perhaps even better, picking apples and pears. So relax and enjoy the garden's final fling.

Nature abhors a vacuum and in the veggie garden we ensure she is kept happy by filling any gap in our crop rotation with a green manure. These are crops such as Grazing Rye, Tares or Buckwheat that have the capacity to produce a large amount of ground-covering soft green growth that suppresses weeds whilst growing and that can be dug in when the space is needed for anther crop. This has the added benefit of increasing soil fertility, building up humus and improving soil structure, what a winner!

Bulbs in pots are a sure fire winner for the patio or cool glasshouse bench and now is the time to be planting them. Favourites with us are tulips, hyacinths and lilies. At West Dean plant them into pots filled with a mix of John Innes and All Purpose compost and topped off with a layer of grit on the soil surface. They are then put somewhere cool and dark until the first leaf tips disturb the surface. At this point they are staked, if necessary, and then put into a cold frame to grow on before going into the display house as the flowers open.

One of the subtle but special pleasures of this period is the flowering of Cyclamen hederifolium. This is followed by the emergence of its leaves which, in the best cases, are almost as showy as the flowers. This is a tough, no nonsense corm that has the added benefit of self-seeding generously and naturalising well in thin grass under the high canopy of trees. To help it in its spread we have been growing on hundreds of seedlings in plug trays for a couple of years and then colonising new areas with them. In a few years these should look stunning

Now is a perfect time to spruce up your lawn, particularly after a hot, dry summer like the one we have just had. Any areas that are severely compacted and looking thin should be aerated using a hollow tined fork. If you don't have such a thing an ordinary garden fork is better than nothing. Then the whole area should be given a thorough scarification to remove the layer of "thatch", that is the undecomposed organic matter that builds up in a lawn over a season.

If you have a large area you may want to hire a machine in but for a small lawn a spring tine rake does a perfectly good job and also offers the opportunity for some useful aerobic exercise. Then you can over-sow with a seed mix appropriate to your lawn and finally finish it off by topdressing and working that in using the back of a rake.

Jim Buckland, Gardens Manager @jimwestdean