All You Need To Know About Basic Gardening - A Guide For Hobby Gardeners: Essential Tips On Gardening

All You Need To Know About Basic Gardening - A Guide For Hobby Gardeners:

Example from the book:

New gardeners are so often put off gardening at the thought that it has to include hours and hours of hard work. The well-liked idea of a low-maintenance garden is one of covering the space with decking and gravel, planted with a handful grasses and pots of evergreens.

Nevertheless, I have discovered an ideal way to help thwart one of the most time-consuming chores in the garden - that of weeding.

This came about almost by accident, as I have a cat who thinks that any uncovered ground is a glorious litter tray! I quickly had to find ways to cover up as a lot of the soil as probable, but soon realised that ground cover plants gave me the even greater benefit from vastly reducing the quantity of weeds.

Of course, there are many gardeners who enjoy the time spent weeding, and I admire them tremendously - there are great physiological and psychological advantages to spending time outdoors among your plants.

But for those of us whose time spent in the garden must be limited because of work commitments or perhaps physiological limitations, there's a way to enjoy our plants with a minimum of fuss. Of course, time has to be spent on the initial ground preparing and planting, nevertheless, this would possibly take far less time than laying decking and gravel!

Weeds are great survivors and they really quickly take over any bare patch of soil. Once they take hold they can really easily smother existing plants and become notoriously challenging to get rid of.

So the idea is to find plants that form dense clumps or spread via their roots to cover the ground. As with most plants, there are ground cover plants for each season when they are at their greatest, and some that look good all year round.

One word of caution. Because a number of these plants spread quickly - which is of course what we want - they also do not actually know when to stop! So you might need to cut them back once in a while to keep them within their allotted space.

What to plant?

I have discovered that plants like bugle (ajuga) - you can get plants with purple, bronze or variegated foliage; euphorbia - with stunning acid-green flowers in early to late spring; lesser periwinkle (vinca minor); bergenias - generally referred to as elephant's ears; as well as small-leaved variegated ivies, all supply year round ground cover. Another advantage of these particular plants is that they are also slug and snail resistant!

In spring and summer, you can use aubretia, arabis, alyssum and candytuft (iberis), which all hug the ground. And specifically useable, and providing some height to a border, is aquilegia - the old-fashioned cottage garden variety - which after flowering retains its foliage in attractive clumps. They also self-seed prolifically, giving you extra plants each year.

Another favourite plant of mine is the hardy geranium. Some variations do die down in the winter - weeds do not grow much then anyway - but the plants soon romp away in spring and supply ground cover and masses of flowers all summer.

Other useable plants to use for ground cover are herbs. Among a wide variety to choose from are comfrey, feverfew, catmint, golden marjoram and mallow.

So there you have it! Once your ground cover plants are established, you'll no longer have to spend hours on your knees, but can spend quality time in your garden...

Table of Contents:

Building A Garden Fence

Beat The Weeds And Save Time In The Garden

Banishing Pesky Pests To Create A Lush Lawn

Basil: The King Of Herbs

Battery Powered Chainsaws

Rose Gardening Soil Preparation

Beautiful Artificial Bonsai Tree

Enhance Your Garden With A Bridge

Beautifying The Garden Or Yard With A Bench

Beginners Guide To Home Composting

Benefits Of Gardening For Kids