Spring is here, the sun is shining, the edge has gone out of the cold and your garden is calling you outside.
Gardening is not for everyone but here’s a tip for our younger audience demographic: get into it as soon as you can, it’s a great hobby.
There’s so much variety in gardening – some people just like growing flowering plants like roses, while others are more into bushes with luxurious foliage.
Other still are more interested in combining gardening with landscaping, but whatever type of gardening you choose it will give you plenty of satisfaction from a job well done.
And as the sign written by south west gardening guru Tim Pickles says: Gardening’s cheaper than therapy plus you get tomatoes.
Nice one, Timmy, I won’t tell our readers how you nearly got me into trouble with your ad about pansies all those years ago on the back page of one of the local papers I was the editor of at the time.
♦ Here’s my Top 5 gardening types and it doesn’t include a bed of roses:
Number 1: Growing salad vegetables like tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and onions. Nothing like a salad made from freshly picked ingredients from your garden. Drizzle a little olive oil over it and garnish with fresh parsley – from your garden of course.
Number 2: Citrus trees: every backyard has to have a lemon tree and preferably a lime tree as well. My ideal citrus garden would also have a mandarin and orange tree.
Number 3: Summer vegetables. Easy to grow and again delicious to eat, I go for the runners like eggplant, zucchini or root vegetables like beetroot and potato.
Number 4: A herb garden. Trendy chefs have one inside their kitchen these days, so anyone who likes to cook a bit should have one of these; try a bit of mint, coriander and parsley. Great in cooking or just garnishing your plate of food.
Number 5: A “dessert’’ garden. Real easy to grow, try watermelon, rockmelon and all the other melon varieties. So now you have just about covered all your food groups and reduced your personal environmental foot print by a massive amount.
Happy gardening.
