January monthly gardening activities

Explore our monthly activities to do in the garden with your children and young people in January.

  1. Plan which vegetables you will grow this year, rotating crops through growing spaces. Use our month-by-month planner to help you.
  2. Choose and purchase your seeds ready to use in spring. Take a look at our spring growing guide for ideas.
  3. Check wooden structures such as fences, raised beds or planters for rotting and repair any damage you find.
  4. Clean and tidy your pots, labels, cold frames, polytunnels and greenhouses ready for spring.
  5. Take hardwood cuttings of shrubs. They'll root over the spring months and be ready to move to their permanent home in autumn.
  6. Prune apple and pear trees, as well as gooseberry bushes.
  7. Cover rhubarb plants with terracotta planters to force an early crop.
  8. Cut autumn raspberry canes to the ground, so they are ready to grow in the spring.
  9. Harvest kale, parsnip and leeks.
  10. Sow seeds indoors for early crops of lettuce, spinach and salad onions.

Upcoming monthly gardening activities

February March Full calendar

Get ready to chit your potatoes and sow sweet peas.

Read more

Start sowing your carrots and planting summer bulbs.

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Take a look at all of our monthly gardening activities.

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Marking Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27)

Create a green memorial to commemorate the Holocaust, Nazi persecution of other groups and more recent genocides.

This resource has been developed by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in collaboration with the RHS Campaign for School Gardening, and provides a foundation for creating your own memorial in three different settings:

  • Growing an indoor memorial plant in a pot
  • Sowing a wildlflower memorial bed
  • Desiging a memorial garden space

Find out more

More ways to explore the outdoors

Use our fun craft and wildlife activities to learn more about the outdoors, growing and nature.

Browse all resources