My Anti-Gardening Guide

Last week we were all treated to some warm days and nights and Ollie, my boyfriend and I took the opportunity to give his garden a bit of a face lift. Ok, I'll be honest, he did the leg work... planting, potting and sweeping. I'm just not the gardening type - way too many spiders for an arachnophobe, in fact I have lived in a gardenless flat pretty much all my life and the most green fingered I have got is picking the leaves off a basil plant to garnish my pizza with. But I still found pleasure in my own way, so I put together my anti-gardener's guide to sprucing up your outside space.

Wild Strawberry plant

When buying plants...

1. Make sure it is the right time of year for the plant and if it is happy to grow in our cold and wet country. The garden centre stocks up on plants to make it look like a tropical jungle, only for you to find when you take it home to your shady space, the palm tree dies instantly. 

2. Check how long the plant lasts for. We got conned by a chilli plant that only lasts one season. 

3. Buy herbs, they are cheap, smell lovely and make cooking way more fun.

Get some garden furniture so that when its all finished, you can invite some friends round to sit in it. We got this Africa chair in the Habitat sale for £25.

Africa Chair Habitat, blue flowers and blue pot Homebase

Go for a colour scheme. It helps bring the inevitable mish-mash of everything together. See, blue chair, blue-ish flowers, blue pots. We went for blue.

The making of my jar lights

When it gets dark, you still want to be able to see your food/ friend's faces. I collected a few jars, tied some twine around the rim and popped a tea light in and hung them on the fence post. They were so easy to make and now the garden is all nice and twinkly.

Flower pots can be expensive and pretty dull. We found these old enamel flour tins and used them instead. 

Gnomes aren't the only answer to a bit of garden decoration. Ollie had these antlers lying around that we nailed to the fence to add a fun focal above the table. Now we are BBQ ready, we just need to wait for the sun... again.