10 Tips for Beginners

1. Embark on the experience of gardening as a life long passion.

2. Be prepared to listen and learn from anybody who cares to share.

3. Subscribe to a gardening magazine or website or read the gardening section in the papers.

4. Before you start out look around you at what the neighbours are growing and at what is thriving.

5. Never, ever go to the plant nursery and impulse buy what looks good.

6. Train your eye not just to look, but to see.

7. Take photographs or make drawings of things you like and ask yourself why you like them.

8. Observe the harmony of nature's pairing of colours and textures, of the variety of combinations.

9. Make a basic plan and then concentrate on completing each part and segment before launching on to the next.

10. Read as much as you can, but remember the most memorable lessons are the actual practical mistakes you make.