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Start with these.
There’s a lot of garden advice out there. You need about five guides to get going. Answer three quick questions and we’ll hand you a reading path that fits your space, your light and your week.
≈ 30 min of reading
works on a balcony too ✓
Three questions. Four guides.
No sign-up. Tap one answer per row and your path builds itself underneath.
0 of 3 answered
1 · How much space?
2 · How much sun?
3 · Time per week?
Start with question 1 — how much space have you got?
The 5 Guides We’d Read First.
in this order, honestlyIf a friend asked us where to begin, this is the list we’d send. Each one takes less than a cup of tea to read, and each one saves you a mistake we made.
Pick Your Garden Kind
Seven areas, each with its own hub of ideas. Choose the one closest to the space you have — or the one you’re dreaming about.
Garden Words, Decoded.
the eight you’ll meet on every plant labelGardening has a lot of vocabulary that nobody explains. Here are the words that come up in nearly every guide, in plain English.
Survives winter outdoors where you live without protection. In the UK the RHS rates hardiness H1 to H7; in the US you’ll see a zone range instead.
“Hardy to –15°C” means it shrugs off a hard frost.
Comes back every year from the same roots. Many die down to the ground in winter and regrow in spring — that’s normal, not dead.
Hardy geraniums, peonies and asters are perennials.
Grows from seed, flowers, sets seed and dies within one year. Cheap, fast and colourful — you sow or buy them again next year.
Cosmos and sunflowers are annuals.
A number for how cold your winters get. The USDA map runs from zone 1 (coldest) to 13; most of the UK sits around zones 8–9 on the same scale.
“Zones 4–8” means it copes from Minnesota to Tennessee.
Snip off faded flowers before they set seed. The plant puts its energy into more blooms instead of seeds, so it flowers for longer.
Deadhead roses just above the next leaf down.
A 5–8 cm (2–3 in) layer of compost, bark or gravel spread on bare soil. It holds in moisture, smothers weeds and feeds the ground as it breaks down.
Mulch in autumn or spring, on damp soil.
Get indoor-raised seedlings used to outdoor life over 7–10 days: outside by day, in at night, then out for good once frosts have passed.
Skip it and tomatoes sulk for weeks.
Nip off the growing tip of a young plant with your fingers. It branches out lower down, giving a bushier plant with more flowers.
Pinch sweet peas once they have three pairs of leaves.
Reading Paths.
read them in order, finish with a gardenReady for a project? Each series takes one idea from start to done. Every step will be its own guide, linking to the next — these paths are being written now.
Your First Cottage Border
Balcony From Zero
A Fire Pit Patio in a Weekend
started with 200 sq ft
“My first garden was a 200 sq ft London backyard with a broken fence and one sulking hydrangea. Everything on this site is what I wish someone had told me that first spring.”
Nina Calloway has gardened for nine years and now looks after a half-acre cottage plot in Kent. She writes and tests the guides; Tom Bexley fact-checks every one before it goes live.