Advice for a complete novice gardener

[llareggub]

Please!

We have wrecked our garden following the extension of our house. We'd love a magic wand, but appreciate hard work is the way. We need something fairly low maintenance, toddler friendly and easy for us garden novices. Are there any ewbsites that could give us inspiration?

I would start watching Gardener's world (friday 8pm). They are building a new garden from scratch so there should be lots of ideas.

Generally speaking a nice well maintained lawn with lovely crisp edges and a few well chosen shrubs would be a good start. Work out how much sun each area gets and ask your local garden centre (or better still plant nursery)for advice on suitable choices.

You could then gradually add interest with plants whether it be flowers or vegetables etc over the course of time.

Please don't be tempted to simply gravel over large areas thinking it low maintenance. It may well be, but it also looks rubbish.

Sounds like good sensible advice to me! I agree with you on the gravel front, by the way. Thanks very much, I'm off to sky plus Gardeners World.

My PC is misbehaving and I can't do links, but the Royal Horticultural Society website has lots of useful factsheets. So does the BBC Gardening website. Get Googling!

And, using old technology, you could try your local library for some beginners' books. There are plenty about.

Good luck.

I second the gravel comments. I spend my LIFE clearing up gravel that ds2 has hurled about the place (and we only have a teeny bit). Don't go there!