Bring Beauty And Colour To Your Garden

Fed up of waking up each morning and looking out at the grey concrete wasteland that is your garden? There are thousands of people who begin their day like that in London but who do absolutely nothing about it, either because they feel that they don’t know where to start or they simply don’t have the time. Our childhood homes always had lovely gardens that were painstakingly weeded by our parents to keep it looking beautiful, but our generation doesn’t seem to have inherited their green fingers.

Shortcuts To A Beautiful Garden

Taking a gardening course can really open your eyes to what you can do with the space you have, whether that’s a tiny window box, the space on a balcony, or a small back garden. You don’t have to own acres and employ three gardeners to have a nice garden, you just have to know what to plant where. Low maintenance gardening courses will teach you how to make the most of your garden, including choosing plants that will thrive in the environment you have. For example, if you have a garden surrounded by six foot high fences that is mostly soggy and covered by a canopy of trees, a gardening course will teach you which plants thrive in damp and shade, like Hostas. Another aim of low maintenance gardening is to plant things like hardy perennials which don’t need to be protected against frost – there are lots of little tips that you will pick up to keep your work to a minimum. We don’t all have hours a week to spend on our knees pulling up weeds, but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to look at something beautiful outside!

Living The good Life

The combination of the credit crunch, rising prices and an interest in which chemicals are going into what we eat are making more and more people look into growing and cooking their own food. Few people have the space to raise a pig in their front garden, but growing fruit and veg. is an easy way of keeping healthy and getting the satisfaction of eating home grown food. Knowing exactly where your food has come from gives you real peace of mind, but organic gardening isn’t as easy as keeping slug pellets away from your carrots. Organic gardening classes such as those taught at Hackney City Farm will give you tips on growing good quality, tasty vegetables and fruit without introducing harmful chemicals to the environment.

Down To Earth With The Basics

If you can’t tell Begonias from Daffodils, a course such as The Gardening Year from Greenwich Community College will teach you what to plant where, when and how, taking you right from a beginner through to a knowledgeable gardener. Some of Greenwich Community College’s courses are Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) accredited and most are part time courses, allowing you to fit them in at weekends and around your job. While Greenwich Community College is in east London, there are plenty of community colleges that offer part time courses in the rest of the city, such as Saint Martins College in central London or Barnet College in North London.

One on one tuition is another option, especially if you find a local gardening tutor who is willing to come to your house and teach you directly what to do to get a beautiful garden. Many plants will only thrive depending on what type of soil you have and the amount of light, wind and water getting to your garden, so sometimes having a gardener come to you can be even more rewarding!

Hackney City Farm has a website at www.hackneycityfarm.co.uk.

To find more courses on gardening in Greenwich, go to: www.gcc.ac.uk.

Sam is a freelance article writer who lives and works in the UK and specialises in creative writing and fiction.