Roses are best pruned by the end of this month. If you do it much later, some future flowers will inevitably be sacrificed. I mulch them with garden compost or well-rotted animal manure enriched with a handful of dried seaweed.

Aerate any compacted pockets of soil with a fork.

Use a hand fork if the area you're working on is small and densely planted, to avoid spearing anything lying underground. There are still frosts to come, most likely, so in very cold areas delay cutting back more tender specimens, such as lavenders, penstemon and grassy subjects like Kniphofia (red hot pokers), for as long as you can bear to look at their ragged outlines If you have dahlias in the ground (in the coldest areas they're lifted and stored for winter), or Agapanthus, the blue African lilies, leave them covered for now with their protective winter blankets, which could be of wood ash, straw, bracken, autumn leaves or shopbought horticultural fleece.