Gardening for Beginners - Ideal Site and Preparation

You may be lucky enough to move into a new house with a garden that is a blank canvas with no major problems with shade or other restrictions. That is a very rare circumstance but for this article we assume that it is possible to really choose just the right site for the garden.

The Best Aspect

What are the main factors that will influence our choice? The greatest determining factor is the sun. Nobody would have a north corner, unless it was absolutely forced upon them because while north facing borders are great for ferns, hostas and some wild flowers they are not the easiest to plan for the novice.

The ideal spot is a border which is south facing where the sun gives light and warmth for much of the day. A garden with a south facing aspect ideally should have rows of vegetables and flowers running north to south so that the plants receive the sun's rays all the morning on the eastern side and all the afternoon on the western side.

If the garden faces south east to get the best distribution of sunlight run the rows north west and south east.

The idea is to get the most sunlight as evenly distributed as possible for the longest period of time. From the lopsided growth of window plants it is easy enough to see the effect on plants of poorly distributed light. So if you use a little diagram remembering that you wish the sun to shine part of the day on one side of the plants and part on the other, you can juggle out any situation. The southern exposure gives the ideal case because the sun gives half time nearly to each side.

A north facing garden may mean an almost entire cut off from sunlight; while north eastern and south western places always get uneven distribution of sun's rays, no matter how carefully this is planned.

Planning and Landscaping a Garden

The garden, if possible, should be planned out on paper. The plan is a great help when the real planting time comes. It saves time and unnecessary buying of plants, bulbs, shrubs, trees and seeds. Landscaping a new garden can be a case of trial and error. No matter how careful you are in choosing the right plant for the right place, most will survive but there are those that for some reason will not.

Preparing the Site

Looking at a new garden site can be very daunting. New garden sites are likely to be covered with turf full of weeds and / or building rubbish.

In a large garden it is tempting to hire a rotovator and plough the top layer in. the result may look good but all you are doing is making the situation worse. In that turf will be perennial weeds such as dock and dandelion with tap roots and perennial grasses. Using a cultivator chops up the roots and every bit of that root will form a new plant, not what we want!

If you wish to be an organic gardener you will hold your hands up in horror at the thought of using weed killer. However, if you use a proprietary weed killer based on Glyphosate which is a herbicide that works by being absorbed into the plant mainly though its leaves but also through soft stalk tissue. Glyphosate is inactivated when it comes into contact with soil since it is adsorbed into soil particles. If you do not wish to use a weed killer you must dig up every bit of the perennial weed. Another organic gardener's method is to cover the ground for a year with black polythene or carpet which cuts out light and water.

If you are lucky enough to not have perennial weeds or you have removed the majority (removing all is very difficult) you can strip the grass off the top. In a small garden this can be done by hand with a spade but for larger gardens believe me it is worth hiring a turf stripper.

Do not throw the turf away; instead pack the turf grass side down one square on another. Leave it to rot and to weather. The result is a very fertile loam.

The soil is now ready for digging over. Both when stripping turf by hand or digging by hand, be sensible and tackle small manageable areas at a time. Apart from hurting your back and ending up with muscles hurting that you did not know you had, it will create a mental block for the next patch you need to dig.

Alternatively, if you have a large area to tackle, hire a rotovator.

Whichever method you use, autumn is a good time to do this. Leave the soil in lumps and the frost over winter will help to break down the soil. In early spring begin to break down the soil by striking side to side with the back of the garden fork. After lumps are broken use the rake to make the bed fine or what is known as a "fine tilth".

Planting

The ground is in now ready for the next and most rewarding step, planting. More preparation is required if the area is to be a lawn otherwise gardening with annuals in flower beds is a great way to get started.

The ground needs to be fine so that seeds can get very close indeed to fine particles of soil and if planting potted specimens you do not have large pockets of air instead of soil for the roots to grow out into.

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