Calling all proper gardeners - where did you learn your stuff?

[chillipickle]

I have recently moved from a gardenless flat to a house with front and back gardens, and am struggling to know where to start. I think I COULD be a gardener, as I do love a beautiful garden and wouldn't mind putting in the effort to create one. Just that I am sadly lacking in actual knowledge of the subject. I'd love to know which plants would thrive where, and how to do pruning properly, and even the basics of which tools/products to buy.

It has got me wondering, all you people who really know your stuff, where did you learn it from? I dare say trial and error will come into it. But apart from that, should I read books? Subscribe to a magazine? Go on a course? Join a local gardening club? Watch TV?

What have other people done, and what did you find most useful in transforming you from a beginner to a confident gardener?

I learnt most of it from my mum, who learnt from my grandfather etc... it's fairly easy to pick up the basics. I've been given some really good books by my DM too, this is one of my favourites.

Also going to garden shows, open gardens, clubs that kind of thing. Eventually you will find yourself knowing the names of plants instead of calling them listeria and chlamydia.

Gardener's World is worth watching, I haven't seen any other gardening programmes so can't recommend anything else. My DM used to subscribe to the magazine and I've seen a few back copies- nothing recently though so it might have changed.

I don't think a course is necessary for the basics.

Magazines (the BBC Gardening one will cover all the basics) and books. I'll occasionally borrow a specilist book - maybe on pruning or something like that - from the library.

If I were starting today I would go and buy a couple of general gardening books from a charity shop and subscribe to the BBC magazine. If you can find a Gardening Year book (one which is divided into monthly chapters and covers what you should be doing in each month/season) then so much the better.

If you want a job to do right now, you could plant up a selection of summer herbs in a large pot or window box (not mint, though, that will take over), stick 3 tomato plants in a grow bag in a sunny (ha!) spot, or plant up a window box or hanging basket with geraniums or petunias and a few foliage plants. All of these will be available at any garden centre, even in one of the larger supermarkets. I have never looked but I am sure You Tube has hundreds of videos on how to plant up window boxes and hanging baskets.

It helps to know what kind of soil you have (soil testing kit from a garden centre) and which parts of your garden are full sun, sun & shade, damp shade, dry shade ... then just get going.

It is not difficult and you really won't make any drastic mistakes. If you put the average plant in the wrong place it can always be moved , although (from bitter experience) I would think carefully before planting large shrubs and trees as they often can't be moved once they are established.

Good luck!

A bit from my mother, a bit from the internet a bit trial and error and quite a lot from the confidence of having planted a lot of things on an industrial scale when I was young on my Dads farm.

Stuff mostly just grows if you stick it in the ground and leave it.

Come and join us on the gardening thread - I am a new gardener but love my garden. I pick the brains of all the experienced gardeners all the time.

Also I would go to other gardens as much as possible. You get a sense of what you like and what might work in your garden.

here it is

chillipickle I am not a proper gardener but I luffs my garden :this is what helped me:

1)Work out from google earth which way your garden faces. Facing North=north facing. The front and back gardens face opposite. The walls will face different again. So you might have a south facing garden with east and west facing walls.
2) Dig up a bit of earth with a spade and look at it. If thick and sticky it is clay if dry and gritty it is sand. If soft and black and crumbly it is loam.
3) See what is already growing. If rhodedendrons and camellias it is ericacous.
4) Get a year/month type garden book from a charity shop. In general autumn and spring are the best planting times so you could order catalogues online and then get plants near the time or go to your local garden centre. Always choose easy to grow stuff. Dig in loads of compost and manure whenever you plant.
5)Royal Horticultural society website to help you choose plants. Choose easy perennials at first and when you plant them plant deep with lots of compost and manure. (unless the instructions say plant shallow like irises)
6)Gardeners world website on how to plant etc.
7) Tools: garden gloves, secateurs, spade, fork, hand trowel, twine, rake, mower.

I knew little, even when I had my first gardens. It took moving to a house with a big garden, which was good in its day but hadn't been tended well for years, and was outdated, to fire my enthusiasm.

Stuck indoors breastfeeding my first child, I found some of DH's grandparents' gardening books ( we live in their old house ). I read, cover to cover, and back again and again, this. I learnt about species, genus, latin names and common names, cultivation, propagation.

It took talking to gardener friends, visiting gardens and nurseries, chatting to rellies, more books from the library, mags, TV progs to develop a wider understanding of stuff like design, planting choices, seasonality etc. Its such a massive subject, yet so personal. It filled my mind for a good few years, I became obsessed with growing things from seed for a bit, lots of trail and error there!

So lots of info sources out there. Enjoy your learning!

Thanks all for your interesting and useful replies. I'm heartened to hear that I'm not the only one starting out a bit later. The BBC magazine sounds like a good place to start, and I will have a poke around the charity shops for books at the weekend.

It's a really useful tip to find a book organised month by month, so that I can just tackle what needs doing at the time, and not worry about keeping track of everything else. EauRouge, I have seen your recommended book on my friend's bookshelf, so I will see if I can borrow that too.

Now just got to find time for all this! Perhaps a bit less housework will be in order?

Prepare to spend your life trying to work out what the proper housework/gardening balance should be... :)

Surely that depends on the weather skink?

Torrential rain= 100:0
Light rain =50:50
Sunny= 0:100

What is this housework of which you speak, Skink?

What really got me gardening was buying a house where the garden was not, on closer inspection, laid mainly to lawn as the estate agent claimed, but laid mainly to strimmed ground elder. We had to get rid of that and do all the design and planting from scratch. I started with the Readers Digest book of gardening and have read lots more books along the way, but what has taught me most (and continues to teach me) is being a member of a gardening club, going to their talks and shows and swapping plants and expertise with other gardeners.

Lucky you. Gardening is a lifetime of love. I'm in the infatuation stage. I think you need to need your soil type and where the sun falls. And look at your neighbour's gardens.

need to know

Get yourself a gardening book by Geoff Hamilton - a true gardening hero and much missed.

I learnt all I know from Geoff's books and when he presented Gardeners World n the '90s. Then it's just learning by trial and error. Usually a lot of the latter.

More importantly when something grows and responds to your TLC you will be very satisfied.

Enjoy!

The best ways to get the knowledge, is if your really serious about it, is to enrol on a gardening course at evening college, if your a single parent you may get a grant to help you enlist. Go to the public library, and get some books out on basic gardening, if your into growing, try reading garden answers magazine or bbc gardeners world. Take part in village fetes, plant stalls, look for plant fairs at weekends, go to garden centres and nurseries, talk to people who are fellow gardeners. I am horticulturally trained, and love helping people discover plants and nature around them, if any of you want any garden help or questions let me know. I am a garden designer and carry out garden maintenance, throughout North Oxfordshire and South Warwickshire and neighbouring counties, i consider myself to be a knowledgeable plantsman, having studied at some quite famous places around the world.

Meconopsis - is this how you did it? I'm thinking more and more about how I wish I'd trained in horticulture when I was a bit younger (I'm 36.) I don't know how great I'd be at garden design, it's the plants and planting schemes I'm interested in! Is it too late for me?

And I've found an 8 week course in garden design at the local college starting in September! Oooh!