You really don’t need to spend a fortune on equipment in order to create a pretty garden. For many years I gardened on a very tiny budget. Of course it is lovely to have the fanciest pots and planters, and buy ready grown plants from the garden centre but it is possible to fill your plot with colour and vegetables in just one season. Doing it all from scratch is immensely satisfying, get your kids involved if you have them, get your partner involved and reach out to the community of gardeners around you. Start sowing seed early in the season. February to March is the time to get salad crops started, and choose what annuals what you fancy. If you are a novice go for easy to grow things like marigolds, chives, cosmos, antirrhinums, nasturtiums and sunflowers; climbers like sweet peas, morning glory and canary bird to hide an ugly fence or grow up rustic obelisks. The seed packet will be labelled as annuals and will flower in the first year. You can either sprinkle where you...

Luckily, I am not as behind with the garden as I am with the blogging! Last summer the garden quickly improved and by mid summer was almost the idyll we are  striving for. Since we have downsized from a small farm with three barns to a semi with just a garage and a tumble down garden shed we decided it was time to be building a new, bigger and better one. After all, a man has to keep his junk somewhere. Using just his brains and his brawn, John built it from scratch  - but of course, he'd never have done it without his ever willing labourer - me!  It is certainly a better building than the one that was there before - it is double glazed and insulated and will have electricity once he has got around to it. Since January this year, I've been poking around outside, uncovering shooting bulbs and tidying up. The pots of bulbs I planted have been lovely and the mild winter seems to have benefited everything. When I pruned the r...