Preparing your terrace for winter, city by city

November is the month when our three cities stop behaving alike. The monsoon is over everywhere, but Delhi is heading into fog and cold, Mumbai is drying out after four wet months, and Bengaluru is entering its most comfortable stretch of the year. A terrace needs something different in each. Here is what we do on our care visits in each city, starting in early November.

Delhi NCR: cover up and cut back the water

From mid-December to late January, Delhi nights fall to 4–6 °C and fog can sit over the city for days. Tender tropicals such as crotons, aglaonema and young bougainvillea suffer most. Move them against a wall that holds the day's warmth, group them together, and on the coldest nights drape a frost cloth or an old cotton sheet over them from dusk to morning. Take it off once the sun is out, and never lay plastic sheeting directly on the leaves.

Cut watering hard. With low light and cold soil, plants use far less water, and wet roots in cold soil rot quickly. Most terrace plants need water every four to seven days in a Delhi winter rather than daily, and succulents and snake plants once a month at most. Water in the late morning so the soil is not wet overnight, and stop feeding foliage plants until February. The exception is winter annuals, which are the whole point of a Delhi terrace in this season.

In Delhi, get winter annuals in by mid-November. Petunias, calendula, pansies and dianthus planted then flower from late December to March, when the terrace is at its best.

Mumbai: repot and replant after the rains

Mumbai has the opposite problem. After four months of heavy rain, the soil in most pots is compacted, sour and washed of nutrients, and roots have often rotted at the bottom. November is the time to repot. Tip each plant out, cut away black or mushy roots, shake out the tired soil and repot in a fresh, open mix with compost. Check the drainage holes at the same time. Plants that grew leggy in the grey months can be pruned back now and will fill out by January.

Mumbai's winter is short and mild, with nights around 16–20 °C, and that suits a round of annuals that would never survive the monsoon. Marigold, vinca, petunia, portulaca and dianthus all do well from November to February on a sunny terrace. Salt air near the sea still burns tender leaves, so rinse foliage with fresh water once a week and keep the most delicate plants behind a screen or a row of taller shrubs.

Bengaluru: the best planting season of the year

Bengaluru is lucky. By November the north-east monsoon rains are easing, days sit in the mid-20s and nights between 14 and 18 °C. This is the best time of year to plant almost anything: new shrubs, climbers, small trees in large planters, even a lawn on a terrace. Plants put in now have four months to root before the heat of March to May. Water less as the rain stops, but watch the strong winter sun and dry air, which can brown the edges of calatheas by January.

If you have been waiting to redo the terrace, November to January is when we most like to install in Bengaluru, because new plants settle in without heat stress. It is also the right window to divide overgrown clumps, take cuttings of bougainvillea and jasmine, and move anything that sulked in the wrong spot during the monsoon.

If someone else waters your terrace, whether family or house help, the most useful thing you can do this month is sit down with them and agree the new schedule. In our experience, most winter losses in Delhi come from a summer watering routine carried on into December, and most Mumbai failures from pots that were never refreshed after the rains.