Where to begin with a new garden
My Dos and Don’ts for year one plus some quick fixes for instant joy.
Have you moved house, or intend to at some point this year? If so, then you’ll either be inheriting an established garden, an overgrown mess, or the joys of a blank canvas. In all three scenarios my advice for the first year is generally the same, which is hold your horses, sit tight and do very little. But, there are some dos and don’ts and there’s also quite a few quick fixes which can make you feel more at home almost instantly.
Perhaps you’re not planning on moving, but you just haven’t really tackled your garden yet and want to know where to begin? A lot of these simple ideas could help you too.
Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last few weeks, then you’ll know that I recently moved house, hopefully for the last time. We’re still churning our way through the mountains of identical moving boxes at the moment, but I am keen to sort out the garden a little bit before the sunshine appears and the temperatures climb. By the way, when is that going to happen? It’s nearly May!
Designing a happy garden space can be such a daunting task. Where do you even begin? More often than not, that results in a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ moment where people subconsciously decide to leave it for another day. Of course, that day never comes and your outside space joins the multitude of dull, neglected, uninspiring gardens up and down the country.
I’m not a professional garden designer and I have absolutely no qualifications at all in the subject. But, I do have decades of experience and have learned through copious amounts of reading, my lovely mother and above all, trial and error. I have designed nine of my own gardens, dabbled in designing for others and can’t wait to embark on my tenth garden at home.
This is going to be a long-standing series from the very beginnings of my forever garden. It won’t be every week, as I also write about interiors and life in general. It’s more of an ad hoc series, so I’ll be popping in and out with my latest gardening job, seasonal ideas and long-term plans. I’m going to be showing you what I do, how I do it, what worked and what went disastrously wrong. Not everything I do will be the ‘correct’ way of doing things, but more, the way that it works for me. It’s a warts and all journey through my gardening life in this new garden and I want to share it with you, so that we may all learn together. Let’s create happier, more enjoyable gardens that put the people that use them first.
Read on to find out what you can do to make your garden instantly more homely and inviting. Discover my dos and don’ts for the first year and I’ll also be telling you what my own garden plans are for 2024. On Wednesday there will be a video tour too - sorry for the delay on this.