Queensland’s severe storm season runs roughly November through April, and every year it converts unprepared gardens into insurance claims and mulch. The good news: garden storm-prep is a single honest afternoon in October, and almost all of it is free. Here’s the checklist, ordered by what causes the actual damage.

1. The projectile audit (the big one)

In storm-force wind, everything loose is airborne, and garden items are the classic window-breakers. Walk the yard asking one question: if this moved at speed, what would it hit?

• Furniture, trampolines, umbrellas: umbrellas down and stored on any storm-warning day; trampolines anchored or flipped; lightweight chairs stacked somewhere enclosed.
• Pots: tall light pots on stands are the first casualties. Before a warned storm, move them down and against a sheltered wall — balcony gardeners, your railing planters and hanging baskets come off the rail at the first BOM warning, no exceptions; a hanging basket in a storm is a wrecking ball on a string.
• The shame corner: star pickets, offcuts, empty pots, the tarp — the pile every yard has. Storm season is the deadline it needed.
• Shade sails: designed for sun, not cyclonic gusts — know the release points and take them down ahead of severe warnings.

2. Trees: prevention now, professionals for the big stuff

October is the time to look up. Dead branches, half-cracked limbs from last season and heavy growth over the house are all pre-loaded storm damage. The boundaries here are hard ones: anything near powerlines is never a DIY job — that’s for your electricity network’s programs and licensed contractors — and large limbs or whole-tree work is arborist territory; chainsaw-at-height improvisation is how storm season fills emergency rooms before the storm. What is legitimately yours: pruning dead or crossing small branches you can reach from the ground, staking young trees properly (loose ties, two stakes — trees anchored rigid snap instead of flexing), and watering deeply through dry spells so root systems hold (deep roots are wind engineering).

3. Drainage: find the rivers before the rain does

A storm cell drops its month of rain in an hour, and the water goes exactly where it went last time. Clear gutters and downpipe outlets; clear the yard’s drains and grates of leaves and mulch drift; and check where downpipes discharge — a downpipe dumping beside a garden bed turns it into a bog (the waterlogged-bed recovery guide is the companion for afterwards). If part of the lawn ponds every summer, October is when a simple surface swale or regraded edge costs an hour instead of a lawn.

4. The garden itself

• Harvest ahead of warnings — ripe fruit and heavy tomatoes come inside; wind takes the rest, and in fruit-fly country storm-dropped fruit left lying is next month’s infestation; collect and bin fallen fruit promptly after every blow.
• Stake and tie what’s tall — dahlias, tomatoes, young shrubs — with soft ties and slack for movement.
• Mulch check: fine dry mulch relocates in wind; wet it down or top with something coarser before a warned event.
• Don’t fertilise into a forecast deluge — it washes off your garden and into the street drain, feeding the creek’s algae instead of your lawn.

5. The five-minute drill when a warning drops

Umbrella down, furniture flat or inside, baskets and light pots grounded against the wall, harvest grabbed, car out from under the gum tree. Rehearse it once in October and it stays a five-minute drill instead of a scramble in green-sky light. Then let the storm be what it is in a prepared garden: free deep watering with a light show.

Related: Waterlogged Garden After Rain: Triage and Drainage Fixes.