How to Start a Garden

If you can’t wait to transform your garden, then you need to do a bit of planning before you begin. Here are our tips to make sure that your garden works for the plants and for you.

Exposure

Whether you want to plant flowers or vegetables, you’ll need to take a look at what sort of sunlight exposure your garden gets. All plants have different needs when it comes to sunlight, so to get the best out of them; you have to take into consideration how they like their light.

Study your garden and make notes of any particularly shady or sunny areas.

Plan Your Plants

Once you’ve assessed your garden’s sunlight exposure, you should then plan your garden out. A vegetable plot needs at least a four by four foot plot of land, and for flowers you’ll need to plan out where they will thrive.

Get to Know Your Soil

Plants often need certain nutrients in the soil that they are growing in to be able to grow properly. You can enrich your soil through composting and fertiliser, but you’ll need to determine how much you have to do.

Storage

If you don’t have any storage for your gardening tools, then you may struggle to look after your garden as effectively as you might do. Planning in storage is therefore always a good idea. Think about the other things that you might need to keep outside, such as bikes, logs and even chickens if you are so inclined.

There are a wide variety of different sizes available when it comes to sheds, like the ones here from Sheds and Things. Allow for a little bit of expansion when it comes to your shed – you may want to expand later on down the line when your garden becomes a roaring success. You should make sure that you keep your shed well organised, so it doesn’t become a dumping ground for tools.

A potting bench is always a good idea if you have room for it, too, as it means you can garden even on a rainy day.

Seasonal Plan

If you only plant seasonal plants, then when the seasons over you’ll be left with bare soil again. Make sure that you always have plants, even if they aren’t necessarily in bloom the whole year round. Evergreen plants will keep your garden looking lush all year round. 

Tools

Before you begin, buy a spade, a garden fork, a hose, a hand trowel and a basket for moving soil around. You can (and will) add to your tool collection as you tend to your garden.