I've just discovered I have a garden!

[NotALondoner]

All these years I have been living here (9) I thought it was a Waste Of Time - but it's not, it's A Garden!

So, the grass is cut, the hedge is hacked at cut, now what? I have lots of tiny pots, sort of windowsill size, what do I do?

I like green stuff best, followed by tiny flowers. I love sweet peas, gypsophelia, lavender, hedge things with berries, and I am now stuck. Is it too late to plant things? I have found seeds for sunflowers, sweet peas, chamomile, lobelia, marigold, cherry tomatoes, and two packs of what says mixed annuals, I think it's lots of different seeds mixed together.

Tell me what to do!!!

Congratulations on finding your garden - and you would be welcome over in garden club with us!

Tiny pots are going to be a pain in hot weather. My guideline size on a med/low-attention pot is that it's too big to lift when planted up. If you get Gardeners World magazine, every month they do a 3-plant combination in a pot based around one main plant. That would be a nice way to gradually build up a container garden. Use your tiny pots for herbs which need mediterranean conditions - buy compost, grit and perlite to make it a really 'poor' soil mix, and rosemary, thyme and other oily-leaved herbs will love you for it. Sage. Oregano.

Do you need a lawn? If you're using the garden as a play space for DC then I guess you do. Think about letting it grow a little bit longer, and then lots of lovely good bugs will live in it (send DC on bug exploring using clear plastic cups and pieces of card) and hedgehogs might come visiting to eat them. I never have my lawnmower below its highest setting. I let the clover and daisies have a few days of flowering (for the bees before I mow (means its about every 2 weeks).

Around the edges, do you have any borders? Is the hedge all the way around? It's probably too late to plant those seeds that you mention you have, but have a look on the websites for nurseries/seed companies and buy yourself a big stock of spring bulbs, which you can plant in Oct (daffs, snowdrops) Nov/Dec (tulips), Jan (alliums, crocosmia) and so on. Or wait till the middle of winter when they go cheap in B&Q-like garden centres.

Lavender will be hard work to look after if you plant now - wait till early spring. I planted a 3m-long lavender border/hedge early this year from a 12-plug-plant set from JParkers. It's already looking like a real hedge, hurrah!

Another tip I've heard to stock out a garden is go to a garden centre every month and buy a couple of perennials that are in flower. That way your garden will be in permanent flower next year! Possibly an expensive way to do it, but works. To make this approach slightly better value, look on gardening websites for video tutorials on how to divide plants - if you dive into doing this early in your gardening life (and not let yourself think it's somehow an 'advanced' thing to do) you will save yourself huge amounts of money. I bought a dahlia recently and the moment I got it home, took off side shoots and put them in another pot. I think I've now got four new small plants aside from the original main plant!

A lovely plant that fits your green, small flowers, berries format is Hypericum, by the way. Pyracantha will be good in corners/boundaries/back of border as birds love to nest in it and it will make fabulous berries. Hebe and parahebe will be green most of the time and then have little flowers or pom pom clusters of flowers that bees will love.

Have fun!

And look out for local gardening clubs where you can often join plant swaps and get ideas of what work well in local conditions.

A fig tree would be very green and sculptural. So would acanthus mollis, macleaya cordata, bamboo (in a pot if it's an invasive variety) and any viburnum. What sort of soil do you have? And is your garden sunny, shady or both?

Well my tip is to plant the back of the border with climbers early on so they become established, provide a frame and a screen and increase the vertical flowering space: eg honeysuckle, clematis, roses, jasmine, passion flower, cotoneaster. Flowers, scent and berries.

Also plant at least one fruit tree cos it makes all the difference to spring and autumn and makes the garden seem like a fertile and productive place. There are lots of small trees around.

Also set aside a small space for your potager early on with (nowadays very in in gardening terms) a little raised wooden bed for it and here you can sow and plant your herbs and veg and fruit.

I am a total amateur but these are the things which have given me so much pleasure since the sandpit went

Oh yes, and think about adding trellis to the top of the fence (if you have a fence) as climbers soon reach the top and then flop about forlornly.