The UK Garden Year
What to do in the garden, month by month
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View guide: The UK Garden Year
PDF guide · 10 pages
Your First Border
Plan it, prepare it and plant it, step by step
Everything you need to turn a patch of grass or a tired strip of soil into a planted border, in the order you'll actually do it. Find out what your sun and soil mean, how to design the planting, how many plants to buy, and how to look after them in the first year.
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Written for UK weather and soils
What's inside
- Choose your spotpage 3
- Get to know your soilpage 4
- Design the plantingpage 5
- How many plants, and which to buypage 6
- Prepare the groundpage 7
- Planting daypage 8
- The first yearpage 9
Who it's for
- First-time gardeners and new homeowners
- Anyone with a bare fence or a tired border to fill
- People who want to do it themselves, step by step
Free extract
The squeeze test: what soil do you have?
Soil type decides which plants will thrive and how you improve the ground. Take a handful of damp soil from about a spade's depth and squeeze it.
Clay
Holds a smooth, sticky ball you can polish with a thumb.
Loam
Holds together loosely, then crumbles when pressed.
Sandy
Feels gritty and falls apart straight away.
Chalky soil is pale and stony, with white lumps of chalk, and drains quickly. Many gardens are in between: a 'clay loam' behaves like clay but is easier to work.
The drainage test
Dig a hole about 30cm deep and fill it with water. Let it drain, then fill it again. If water is still standing after a few hours, or the next day, the soil drains poorly. Choose plants that cope with wet soil in winter, or build a raised bed.
This is a short extract. The full guide has 10 pages.
Buy this guide for £4.99Questions and answers
It shows you how to choose, with example plants, typical spacings and a worked example for a 3m by 1m border. For a plant list made for your own border, our border planting plan does it for you.
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View guide: The Low-Maintenance GardenWant a plan made for your own border?
Answer a few simple questions and we'll choose plants for your sun, soil and style, show you where each one goes and how many to buy. See a free preview before you pay. £24, one-off.
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