This is a list of what can go in the ground, or in a pot, or on a windowsill, in each month of a British year. It is drawn from the sowing window printed on every packet we sell, so it says what we would say if you rang up and asked.

A month is a blunt instrument. The dates here are a national average, and the country is nine hundred miles long: a gardener in Cornwall is a fortnight ahead of one outside Aberdeen, and both are ahead of anyone on a north-facing slope. Read the month as the middle of a range rather than a starting gun, and let the weather have the final say. Soil that is cold and wet will rot a seed whatever the calendar says.

Two kinds of sowing appear here, and the difference matters more than it looks. Most entries say simply sow — the packet gives a window and leaves the method to you, which usually means a tray or a pot somewhere sheltered, then planting out once the seedlings are sturdy. A smaller number say direct sow, and those are the ones you can put straight where they are to grow. We only say direct where the packet says it. Where it does not, we have left the method open rather than guess on your behalf.

Germination times are a guide to patience rather than a promise. Warmth moves them more than anything else, so a February sowing on a cool windowsill will take longer than the same seed in May. Nothing has failed until the time on the packet has passed twice over.

The list gets better as the year goes on, in a literal sense: we are writing a note for each sowing window, in the order the months arrive, and where a note exists you will see it instead of the standard line. Everything else on this page is already true — it is the voice that is still being filled in.

Gardening Jobs for January: What to Do in the Garden in January

Gardening Jobs for February: What to Do in Your Garden This Month

Gardening Jobs for March: What to Do in Your Garden This Month

Gardening Jobs for April

Gardening Jobs for June

Gardening Jobs for September

Gardening Jobs for October

Gardening Jobs for November

Gardening Jobs for December: Your Month-End Garden Guide

UK Sowing Calendar

Parsley 'Italian Giant' Seeds

Sweet Pea 'Little Sweetheart' Seeds

Soak overnight, then one seed to a deep pot or root trainer — the roots go a long way down before the top does anything at all. Overwintered cold and bright, it makes a sturdier plant than a spring sowing ever manages.

Sweet Pea 'Royal Family' Seeds

Deep pots, kept cool and bright rather than warm; heat is what makes them leggy. Pinch the tips out at 8–10cm and you get a bushier plant with far more stems worth cutting.

Parsley Seeds

Micro Green Seed Set

Shade Garden Seed Box

Sweet Pea 'Prince of Orange' Seeds

Soak overnight and sow one seed to a deep pot. Kept cool through the winter it roots hard and climbs away in spring, rather than sitting still for a month first.

Sweet Pea 'Matucana' Seeds

The scent is the reason to grow this one, and an autumn sowing brings it forward by weeks. Soak overnight, sow singly, and keep it cool and bright over winter.