Creaks, Stains and Green Patches: A Late-Autumn Walk-Round for Your Garden Timber

November is the honest month for timber. The leaves are down, the light comes in low and raking across the panels, and everything a fence, a deck or a gate has been quietly hiding since May is suddenly on show. The clocks have gone back, the first hard frost is somewhere in the forecast, and the garden has stopped growing long enough for you to look at it properly.

Here's the good news: you don't need a moisture meter, a ladder or a trip to the builders' merchant to do this. Ten minutes, a screwdriver and a torch is the whole kit list. Walk the same route every autumn — gate, fence line, deck, shed base, raised beds — and ask the same questions in the same order. The point isn't to find work. It's to work out which bits of timber are doing their job and which are in genuine trouble, and then to leave the rest alone until spring.

Start at the gate, because it talks

A gate is the one piece of garden timber that moves every single day, so it's usually the first to tell you something. Open and close it. Listen. A creak that wasn't there in July is almost always a hinge screw that's worked loose, or a hanging post that's begun to move at the base — and a post that moves at the base is often a post that's rotting at the base, because that's where the water sits.

Get down at ground level with the screwdriver and push the point firmly into the foot of the post. A few millimetres of give is fine. Going in like a knife through a satsuma is not. Then check the latch: if the gate has started catching or dropping, the timber hasn't shrunk, the fixings have given. Note it. Don't fix it yet if you're still in your slippers.

Walking the fence line: leaning is not always failing

Walk the whole run, not just the bit you can see from the kitchen window. What you're looking for here is a change in posture. Panels lose their vertical because posts move, and posts move because the ground softens, the fixings slip, or the whole thing is being worked by wind from the same direction every winter.

Green algae along the bottom of boards is completely normal in a shaded garden and not, by itself, a problem. Green on the actual post, right at soil level, with soft timber underneath it, is a different story — that's the start of rot and worth flagging now. Also look up: a panel that's lost two or three fixings along the top rail is a panel working in the wind, and it will keep shedding them.

The deck: the interesting bit is underneath

On the surface, look for standing water in the gaps, black algae patches on the north side, and any board that gives slightly underfoot near a butt joint. All three are drainage and airflow issues, and all three get worse in winter.

Then kneel down and point the torch at the joists and the ledger where the deck meets the house. This is where real trouble hides, because it's permanently damp, permanently shaded, and nobody ever looks. Probe any dark, soft-looking patch with the screwdriver. If it goes in easily, you've found something worth a proper look in daylight. Nails lifting their heads are a nuisance; a joist that's gone soft is a project.

Shed base and bottom rail

Walk around the outside of the shed with one question: is the bottom rail sitting in wet? If soil, gravel or leaf litter has built up against it, the answer is yes, and the bottom rail will be the first thing to go — quietly, over about four winters. Check the bearers underneath are still lifting the building clear of the ground, and have a sniff inside. A shed that smells damp but shows no staining is usually a ventilation problem rather than a leak; condensation on the underside of the roof sheeting in November is normal, puddles on the floor are not.

Raised beds

Look at the boards where they meet the soil, not where they meet the air. Soil contact is the wet zone, and it's where the lining, the fixings and the timber all fail first. Push a fingertip into the board just above the soil line. Firm is fine. Crumbly with a hint of orange fungus is a bed you'll be rebuilding next autumn. Check too whether the soil has settled and pulled away, because a gap lets water sit against the inside face all winter.

And the things that are perfectly fine

Before you reach for a brush, know what normal looks like. Silver-grey weathering is the timber doing exactly what it should. Surface mould on a north-facing panel is cosmetic. Small shakes and splits opening at the ends of boards are the wood drying out, not failing. Water staining that's dry to the touch is history, not a live problem. None of that needs anything doing to it, and painting over it in cold, damp November weather is more likely to trap moisture than protect anything.

The three fixes worth doing before the frost

1. Break the ground contact. Clear soil, mulch and wet leaves away from the base of every post and the bottom rail of the shed. Fit or replace gravel boards where timber meets soil. Get an air gap under anything that's currently sitting in it. This one fix prevents more rot than any product you can buy.

2. Re-fix what's working loose. Swap popped nails for proper screws, add a brace to a sagging gate, tighten the hinges on the one that's dropped. Do this while the timber is wet and swollen and easy to work, and it'll still be right in April.

3. Open the drainage and ventilation. Clear the gutters, check the downpipe isn't discharging against a post, and clear whatever's blocking the vents or the gap under the shed. Water needs somewhere to go that isn't into the timber.

Everything else can wait. Spring is the season for treatment, oil and repairs in the dry; November is for diagnosis. Walk it, note it, fix the three things that matter, and let the rest of the garden sleep.