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By the time the first named storm of the season is announced, the useful work is either done or already missed. A fence post you meant to replace in September is a much harder conversation in a force nine. Autumn gives you a window: the ground is still soft enough to dig, most of the leaves are down so you can see what you are dealing with, and there is still some light left at the end of the working day.
A morning spent on the ten checks below will not storm-proof a garden completely. Nothing does, short of concreting the lot and felling every tree. What it will do is remove the easy failures: the loose panel, the blocked gully, the parasol that turns into a missile. That is the difference between a garden that looks battered in March and one that needs rebuilding.
Trees do the most expensive damage and cause the least reversible harm, so start here. Start by looking rather than cutting.
1. Walk the boundaries before you touch anything. Take a slow lap with a torch if you have to, and note anything that looks different from last winter. The signs worth taking seriously are:
Then ask the uncomfortable question: if it came down, what would it hit? The greenhouse, the car, the neighbour's conservatory, the shed you use as an office.
2. Take out what is dead, then stop. Dead wood overhanging a path, a shed or a parking space is worth removing, and a confident gardener can usually manage it with a pruning saw and a pole pruner while standing on the ground. Anything above head height, anything near a power line, anything needing a chainsaw or a ladder with a saw in one hand is a job for a qualified tree surgeon. Heavy pruning in autumn is rarely the right answer either: it leaves large wounds open to decay and can push out soft new growth that the first frost will catch. Light and targeted beats brutal, and cutting in wet weather spreads disease. Also check your insurance before you start, not after.
3. Watch the ground, not just the tree. The gales that fell trees in autumn usually arrive with saturated soil. Shallow-rooted species such as birch, willow, poplar and the tall conifer hedges many of us inherit are the ones that go over. If you can push your heel easily into the soil at the base of a big tree, it has less grip than it did in July. Note it, check it after every wet spell, and keep the car parked elsewhere.
4. Test every post with a firm shove. A post that moves more than a centimetre or two at the top is on its way out. If it is rotten at ground level, replacement is the only real fix, and autumn is a good time to do it while the soil still moves. Metal repair spikes driven alongside a sound post can buy a few more seasons where the rot is higher up.
5. Brace the panels and free the gates. Wind gets under a panel and lifts it, which is why so many fences fail at the top corner. Diagonal timber braces fixed to the back, or a rail across the top, spread that load. Grease gate hinges and check latches, because a gate that slams itself shut all winter will eventually take its own hinges off. If a panel is already loose, take it out and store it flat rather than letting the next gale do it for you.
6. Clear the roofline and everything the water runs into. Leaves in a gutter mean water down a wall, and water down a wall means damp. Clear gutters on the house, shed and garage, check downpipes are connected and clear at the bottom, and lift the grates over gullies to remove silt and leaf litter. Never lift a drain cover to peer inside. If your street floods, the roadside gully outside your house may be part of the problem; report blocked highway drains to your local council.
7. Drain or anchor water butts. A full butt is heavy, an empty one is buoyant, and neither is fixed to the ground. A strap around the butt and a solid post, or simply draining it to half before a named storm, saves a lot of tidying. Check ditches and soakaways at the end of the garden too. A clear channel in October is worth more than a pump in December.
8. Store what you can, strap what you cannot. Cushions, parasols, hammocks, gazebos, garden games, hanging baskets, bin lids, hose reels and paddling pools all travel in high wind. Parasols should come out of the table and go indoors; left in, they turn a patio table into a projectile. Trampolines are the classic autumn casualty, so take the net and enclosure down, turn the frame over or anchor it with proper ground anchors, and do that before the wind arrives rather than during it.
9. Group pots and think about weight. Grouping containers gives them mutual shelter and cuts the wind load on each one. Move them against a wall on the sheltered side, raise them on feet so they do not sit in standing water, and wrap terracotta in something insulating if hard frost is forecast. For a big pot you cannot move, a strap around the rim anchored to a screw-in ground stake is cheap and effective.
10. Fix the roof before the wind finds it. Felt lifting at one corner is the start of a long, damp story, so re-secure or replace it now. On a greenhouse, replace missing glazing clips, seal loose panes with horticultural silicone, and check the frame is properly anchored to its base, because that is where they usually fail. Lash the door shut. If you have a polytunnel, check the cover is tight and that the frame has not worked loose at the ground.
An hour of preparation the day before is worth a week of clearing up afterwards.
Wait until it has genuinely passed, then look up before you walk anywhere near trees. Split limbs and branches hung up in a canopy are the main hazard after a storm, and they often come down hours later in a light breeze. Keep children and pets away from the bottom of the garden until you have had a proper look.
Never touch a fallen cable, and keep others away from it. Report it to the electricity network operator and to the emergency services if there is any risk to life; 105 is the national power cut helpline. Photograph damage before you clear it, keep receipts for emergency repairs, and speak to your insurer early, particularly if a neighbour's tree is involved. Let them tell you what to move and when.
Then do the useful bit: make a note of everything that failed, and put the fixes in the diary for next September. Storm-proofing is a routine, not a one-off, and a garden that gets checked each autumn rarely surprises you in January.
Photo: Joachim Schnürle / Pexels
