How to Start Gardening

So, what kind of garden do you actually want? There are many directions in which you can go. If your main joy in the outdoors comes from all things floral, you might wish to prioritise your space for beds, borders, pots, containers, hanging baskets, and all the other ways you can fill your space with diverse arrays of colourful flowers. Perhaps you reckon your kitchen could benefit from a selection of freshly grown herbs and vegetables, close to hand, in which case, an herb garden or a handy vegetable patch is the way to go. Or maybe your aesthetic sensibilities tend in the direction of the dry, muted colours of a beautiful little rockery or the wild and free-growing beauty of a mini wildflower meadow?

What’s most likely, however, is that what you’re after will be a combination of several of these ideas. A couple of well-placed bushes, shrubs and trees will always compliment flower beds, and you needn’t limit yourself to plants for eating and plants for admiring; they can usually be grown together! The possibilities really are endless and all well within your grasp but having a think about precisely what you want before anything else can help you make the best use of your space whatever it happens to be.

If you want to get into gardening, you’re going to going to need some tools. These days, there’s a tool for every conceivable job you might have to do in the process of creating your perfect garden, but not all of those are necessary. Gardening tools can be divided into the absolute necessities, which no gardener should be without, and the specialised tools which you might need to be pick up for certain duties. The good thing is that most effective gardening will only ever require a handful, and you certainly don’t need to break the bank on an expensive array of equipment when you’re just starting out.

Probably the most essential garden tool of all is a pair of secateurs. If you’re out gardening, you’re sure to have these close to hand. Secateurs will be used to cut back plants to encourage new growth, for harvesting certain fruits and vegetables and just for generally tidying up plant displays.

A common garden trowel, a gardening fork and a shovel are another three very basic garden tools that every gardener should own. They might say a good gardener has “green fingers”, but you’re not going to get very far scraping about in soil with your bare hands. Digging soil is one of the main duties of the gardener and these basic tools will help you get right into the soil when it comes to planting, digging in mulch or organic material, breaking up clumpy soil or dealing with weeds.

And while we’re on the topic of main duties, your plants are going to need water of course. Britain may get plenty of rain, but you can’t rely on that all the time. Depending on the size of your garden, anything from a small cup for hanging baskets to a garden hose for large gardens will be appropriate. Use your best judgement – it should be fairly obvious!

If you have a lawn of any sort, you’re also going to need a lawnmower. Mowing is one of the primary duties of lawn care and, during the summer, you can expect to be doing it one or even twice a week. Of course, if you have limited space and are simply tending a few hanging baskets or containers, you can perhaps forego this otherwise essential tool.

There’s no need to waste money on things you don’t need, so always have a think about what type of garden you’re wanting to create before shelling out on unnecessary equipment. That said, there are several other tools which can come in very handy for specific type of gardens.

Small beds and borders can be managed with a garden fork, but if you’re going to be sowing over a larger area, a good garden rake for evening out the surface can come in very handy. You can also use your rake for scarifying lawns and, of course, clearing up fallen leaves. And when it comes to creating the low seed furrows – known as drills – over a larger area, you might want to invest in a hoe as well.

For protecting freshly sown seed or other delicate plants from birds and wildlife, netting can be another useful investment, as can twine, plastic tie wraps and bamboo cane for attaching plants to supports when needed.

Beyond such relatively basic tools lie all manner of fancy gadgets from rotating sprinklers to lawn aerating shoes. There’s usually no need to shell out on these, but it might be obvious where they could come in really handy. Again, use your best judgement.

Soil is perhaps the number one factor in determining what type of plants you can grow. Is your soil light and sandy or heavy and clayey? Does it have good drainage, or will some mulch need to be added before planting? Once you’ve decided what type of plants you’d like to grow, check out online growing guides for those plants – they’ll always tell you what type of soil the plant prefers for optimal growth. If you’re not sure what type of soil you have, a quick look at the plants growing in neighbouring gardens for a good idea what you can best support or you can bring in a sample of your soil in a container and we will test it for you.  If you find that your soil type is isn’t ideal for the type of garden you dearly want, there are thankfully ways around this.

As mentioned, mulch can improve drainage where the soil is to clumpy and heavy, and there’s always feeds and fertilisers to improve the nutrient content of your soil. If you really fancy going all out, you can even fill out areas with compost or some other substitute for your native soil. And – speaking of compost – containers and hanging baskets are of course mercifully independent of whatever conditions you’re saddled with. You can fill them with exactly what’s needed for exactly what you want!

Whatever you go for in the end, some soil preparation will go a long way to improving growth for whatever you’re intending to plant. All soils will benefit from working in some compost ahead of planting in the spring. Simply work the compost into the top 8 to 12 inches of soil and mix them well together. It takes a couple of months for the enriching nutrients to diffuse through your soil so it’s best to do this in winter or the early spring before the planting period.

Regardless of what type of garden you plan to create, weeds can be a pesky nuisance. These hardiest of plants can grow anywhere, from your soil beds to your lawn and even between the slabs of your patio or garden path. Luckily, there’s a few weed killing tips and methods that will work in nearly all situations and can also help prevent the future return of weeds.

Armed with your garden fork for the big weeds (and an ordinary table fork for the little) you can of course manually pull out weeds if there’s only a few. The rule of thumb is to always “get the roots”. When coming to a weed, stick your fork deep into the soil and give a good twist to liberate the roots from the soil. Then simply pull them out! Bring a plastic bag or some tarp to collect the corpses – these can be added to the compost bin. If the weather has been particularly dry, weeding becomes very easy. All you need to do is cut off the weeds just below the soil line and the weeds will quickly shrivel and die. You can use a hoe or rake for this.

Mulching is a great way to prevent weed outbreaks. Not only does mulching keep your plant roots cool and improve the nutritional value of your soil, it also deprives weeds and weed seeds of the light they need to grow. Mulching can also create a friendly environment for several helpful insects.

There is of course all manner of helpful weed killers that can help you deal with weeds over a large area. These are usually most helpful for lawn weeds, with some weed killers designed to kill off weeds but leave grass alone. A very useful technique for preventing weeds on your lawn is to scarify. To do this, drag a rake through your grass to collect loose organic material and the tops of weeds into a pile, then you can dispose of this in the compost bin. Your grass might look a little thin after scarifying but be assured that it will quickly grow back – and the weeds won’t.

When it comes to planting and sowing, you’ll most likely be dealing with cultivars or young plants which are “started off” elsewhere or, in slightly rarer cases, you’ll be sowing seed directly into your garden.

When planting out plants which have been started off, simply have a look at the pot or container they’re already in before planting them in your soil. All you need to do then is create a hole twice as deep and wide as the pot, fork over the bottom of the hole, mix compost with the soil and fill back in, so the plant not planted deeper than in the pot. Topically applying some mulch around the base of your plant can be a great way to protect and nourish the roots. Sometimes, certain plants will have special planting requirements. Strawberries, for example, get their name from the straw which was placed around their bases when planting out in days of old. This was done because strawberries’ stems, leaves and fruit need to be protected from direct contact with the soil to prevent rotting. Any growing guide will certainly alert you to any requirements like this when you’re out planting or ask our team when you next visit.

When it comes to sowing seed, the trick is to make sure the plant has room to grow (this will determine your spacing) and that the seed is protected from birds and wildlife. Very often a small trench (called a drill) is dug into prepared soil and the seed placed evenly apart along it. Again, do consult growing guides for whatever flower you’re planting out.