Ten Top Gardening Tips by Rachael Lucas

21 May 2015

I do all my best writing in the garden. Not with a pen and paper, but with a trowel in hand, fingernails full of dirt, and the sun on my back. When I'm working outside I have time to clear my mind of everything but what I'm doing, and it gives me a chance to work through the story I'm writing and more often than not tricky plot problems sort themselves out without me doing a thing! I often hear the voices of my characters chatting away in my head, too - and it helps me to get to know them, so when I sit back down at my desk they feel like real people to me.

Coming Up Roses

My top tips

Start with a cup of tea. Sit down, have a look through some gardening magazines or get some books from the library. Think about the sort of gardens you like spending time in, and how much time you're able to invest each week. When I was a gardening blogger and living in a little village, I used to have a 100ft garden with huge flower borders and an allotment. I spent a lot of my time outside! Now I write full time and I have a much smaller walled garden in town and do a lot more container gardening.
Think small. When I first started gardening I dug out one narrow strip of earth along the side of my first lawn. I made sure it was clear of weeds and sprinkled a mixture of easy seeding flowers - Californian Poppies, Limanthnes, Nasturtiums, Marigolds - and waited a few weeks. I was rewarded with a gorgeous, vibrant display, which lasted all summer.
Pick a spot. You're going to need sunshine for at least six hours a day to grow most fruit, flowers or veg. If your garden is a shady place, you'll have to work a bit harder on making sure you choose the sort of plants which can cope with that, but ferns, hostas and sedum will all thrive and give you a gorgeous green display.
Decide what you're going for: a little veg patch? Some containers on the patio or on your balcony? Whatever you decide it's easy to throw yourself in at the deep end and end up exhausted, filthy, and with nothing to show for your work than backache and muddy knees. So set yourself little projects and complete them, one step at a time.
Think about what you like to eat. I always grow mint (for Pimm's in summer and fresh mint tea) and Rosemary (roast lamb and delicious Tuscan Bean Soup) and I have Basil, Thyme and Oregano growing in pots on the patio for cooking. Hanging baskets filled with tiny, delicious cherry tomatoes and a little patch of peas growing up canes are a brilliant way to get fussy children eating vegetables without thinking about it.
Plant some flowers for cutting and you can have gorgeous displays inside all summer. A Eucalyptus bush will give you dramatic, silvery-grey foliage, and with hardly any work (just throw down a handful of seeds on weeded, raked earth) you can have cornflowers, cosmos, deliciously scented stocks, nicotiana…
Don't forget about height. Pop some sweet peas in a container (half fill it with polystyrene to make it easier to carry and save on compost) and use some bamboo sticks to create a tripod. Tie at the top with some twine, and in a few weeks you'll have a beautifully scented display of blooms which - as long as you keep cutting them and popping them in vases inside - will flower right up until autumn.
Then there are bulbs. An afternoon of planting will bring you some colour in the dark days of spring when sunny holidays seem ages away. I fill my garden with swathes of daffodil and tulip bulbs in autumn and it is so lovely to see their happy faces in April.
Not just for Dame Edna Everage - if you put in gladioli bulbs right now, you'll be rewarded in autumn, just as the garden is passing its best, with dramatic spikes of huge, blousy flowers. I know they're a bit 70s but I love a bit of retro in the garden - I also adore dahlias, even the most grannyish ones!
Don't forget to enjoy it!
You're never going to be finished - there's always something to do in the garden, but that's part of the appeal. Sometimes you can get so wrapped up in making sure everything looks perfect that you forget to sit back, have a drink, and just soak up the sunshine with a good book (I'd recommend Coming Up Roses, if anyone's stuck for suggestions!).