Your Garden Needs Me!

As with any garden that Your Garden Needs Me works with, you need to think about what you want to use your garden for and what you would like in it.  Here are Five Pointers to think about whilst tackling a garden:

1. Budget - Decide on a realistic budget. Work out whether you require paid help. Remember that the cost of materials, plants and hire equipment can soon add up.

2. Length of stay - If you are planning to stay in your home a while, you can afford to wait for your garden to mature. If you require a more instant garden, it'll cost your more. Plan this into your budget.

3. Safety - If you have babies, children, you won't want a water feature or any poisonous plants. Think about slopes and moving around the garden especially if elderly persons live with you.

4. Level of maintenance - Are you a lazy or keen gardener? It makes a difference to the design of your garden. If you are the former, opt for low-maintenance features, such as ground cover plants or mulch, to save regular weeding rather than masses of annuals in a border, which need a lot of looking after.

5. The next thing you need to do - Look at what already exists in your garden and think about how it can be re-used. It can be tempting to throw everything out and start with a clean slate but it adds to the budget. Secondly (for thought) all the woody plant material and prunings can be quickly fed into a hired shredder and the chippings make an excellent mulch for the borders.

Regarding pots

Mix plants and herbs in pots - I have thyme and lavender, fennel, ivy and hanging foliage, alpines. It all works. I also believe in the four seasons, so yes you can mix it up in the same pot as long as you have growing room. If you are going to pot this is all part of the fun. Choosing or making attractive containers (an old wheel barrow) is a brilliant way of livening up the garden and stamping your personality. Basically you can be traditional or eccentric as you like. The only limit to the range of things that can be used is your imagination.

Your plain terracotta pots can be painted to contrast with or complement flowers and foliage growing inside. Use water base paints so to allow the terracotta pot to breath. You can also make eccentric, traditional designs using liquid seaweed, just paint away (imagination!)

I also coat the pot with quick drying (20 minutes) matt vanish to protect the pot from frost, including the underneath. If we have really bad frost I bubble wrap them and cover the top to protect them from the snow, but remember to support the top cover. In the day they will need to breath.

Also if you paint your pots with natural yogurt this will give you the fungii effect. Similarly, if you coat the roots of e.g. fox glove root in natural yogurt then wrap it in kitchen paper or tissue paper and place it in a crack in a wall. It will take and grow.  There is no wrong way to do planting, just remember these points:

• think all four seasons for year round colour
• be eccentric, traditional, imaginative
• give plenty of growing space
• choose type of soil depending on the plants
• use food pellets and water retention pellets
• think about good drainage
• raise pots off the ground to protect from frost