Fancy making gardening your new hobby? According to Our Country Gardening, around 40% of the population enjoy gardening and say it’s their hobby. And with the growing benefits, it’s not hard to see why gardening is one of the UK’s favourite pastimes.
But why should you make gardening part of your life? Whether you’re planning on becoming an indoor plant savant, creating a luscious wild garden to help your local environment thrive, or cultivating an award-winning display of blooms you can proudly show off at RHS; the benefits can be plentiful. Firstly, you usually get outside, meaning you can benefit from boosted vitamin D levels. Being outdoors for at least 15 minutes daily in sunlight can massively impact your mood and mental health. On top of this, gardening is great for improving physical health and keeping you active, and you can support strength, balance, and cardiac health simply by getting out and keeping your garden looking good.
With these benefits of gardening in mind, let’s look at some tips for beginners so you can make gardening an active and joyful aspect of your life, not something you dread doing.
Start Small
Many people can be guilty of going all in when starting something new, overestimating their skills and the work involved. When it comes to gardening, remember that starting small is not a limitation but a joyful journey of learning and growth. It’s a chance to experiment, make mistakes, and, most importantly, enjoy the process.
Starting small in gardening allows you to build your skills and better understand what you need to do before venturing into more complex garden projects. This approach helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed and ensures a more enjoyable gardening experience.
Understand Your Garden
Knowing your garden means understanding multiple things. What aspect is it? Is it north or south-facing? Where does the sun hit the ground? What type of soil do you have? A soil test can help you ascertain this. All of these details can help you get the best start and feel more confident in your gardening journey. It’s like getting to know a new friend, and the more you understand, the more you can help it thrive.
Make A Plan
Planning is not just a boring task; it’s an essential step that can help you avoid making things look thrown together and enable you to put different plants, fruits, and veggies in the right space to help them thrive, not merely survive. It’s the key to an organized and flourishing garden. There’s a unique satisfaction in seeing your plans come to life in your garden, and it’s a great way to stay on top of your gardening tasks.
Get Your Tools
Gardening becomes massively easier with the right tools. Understanding the right tools and equipment for your type of gardening, e.g., indoor plants for potted outdoor plants or malign flower beds, will help you understand your needs.
Having the right tools can make gardening much easier. For instance, if you need to move shrubbery or cut down hedges, you might find looking for suitable chainsaws useful. Other essential tools for beginner gardeners include a trowel, rake, gloves, shears, and a watering can. As you gain more experience, you can consider upgrading to tools like a wheelbarrow, knee pad, spade shovel, and hoe.
From here, understanding what your garden needs can help you find the right tools to upgrade to, such as an irrigation system, greenhouse, raised flower beds and so on.
Learn To Plant
It’s not always as easy as it sounds. Instead of just going for it and planting how you think, you should find a tutorial for yourself and follow the instructions step by step. This will enable you to get the best results and learn new skills to hone your craft for better results.
As mentioned above, take it slow, start small, and build up from here.
Understand Watering and Feeding
This is important for all novice gardeners. You need to know precisely when and how to water your new garden to encourage growth and health without being disappointed. A general rule is to water the root ball, not the plant itself, for best results. Soaking the root ball every week rather than the flowers or leaves every couple of days will yield better results, as will using a drip irrigation system to let you monitor watering and ensure all plants get what they need.
Take some time to understand the intricacies of watering your flowers. Not all flowers need the same amount of watering, and wetter days can mean you need to adjust your schedule.
When it comes to feeding, you need to feed your flowers fortnightly, more frequently for those in containers during the growing season in spring and summer. Again, researching feeding schedules for plants and understanding what each plant needs can result in better results, especially for beginners.
Understand Pests
Pests can become your arch nemesis where gardens are concerned, and it’s essential to understand the different types of pests you might encounter. Some are completely harmless and aren’t worth worrying about, while other garden pests will be more of a problem you need to address on a frequent basis. Keeping an eye out for slugs, snails, and aphids can help to protect your budding garden, and implementing garden pest control can be well worth it to help you avoid the damage these creatures can cause.
Practise
Practice makes perfect, much like with anything in life. If you put in enough time and dedication to learning how to garden, understanding your garden plants, and what it takes to sustain them, the easier it will be to put this knowledge into practise. You won’t achieve amazing results overnight or even over a few weeks; it could be months, maybe even years, to get to the perfect garden, so be patient, practise and remember that good things come to those who wait.
Take your time, start small, build your skills, and before you know it, you will have a new hobby you can be proud of and enjoy day after day.
