Starting Gardening ? Try these tips

You don’t need a garden or even a window box to start your gardening journey. There are lots of ways to have fun and build up your skills and appreciation of gardening.

1. When you can recognise plants in hedgerows and know a bit about them
2. When you can smell plants in a public garden and appreciate the effort needed to get the display just so
3. When you know what flowers to buy from a florist and how to care for them
4. When you join a local gardening or horticultural club and get a social network plus gardening insights and support.

- then you are starting to be a skilled gardener.

That is not to say you shouldn’t have your own garden space. The therapeutic effect of your own patch of soil should not to be ignored - in my opinion it can’t be overstated.

• Growing your own choice of plants will be reward in it’s self

• Using your artistic and creative style will create a personal and individual garden space that repays your planning and execution of the core gardening skills.

• Features you include can help the family, the environment, the locality and even your culinary experience if you grow herbs fruit and vegetables

So some simple tips for new gardeners

• Look around you at anything that grows.

• Consider why and how a plant is thriving is it naturally occurring or placed, is it a natural time or place to find it, how might it survive and reproduce

• Pace yourself: the garden can’t be rushed and there is a time for everything. You need to be ‘able to stop and smell the flowers’ because there will also be a fair bit of work involved once the gardening bug bites.

• Don’t forget gardening is for fun – if its not fun its horticulture