I realise its late in the year, but ive sorted out the garden and found a nice large space i want to put some flowers in but having literally no gardening skills and pretty much no time what do you recommend
need them to be ?
– easy to grow..im a really bad gardener : )
– minimal fuss .. no time at the mo and just want them to grow
– cheap as chips

suffice to say im a student ( with a full time job !) so time is pretty much gone as ive just started college and kissed the next three years of my life away

cheers

ps anyone here went back to college as a mature student ? any tips ?

Some good advice here

eh im back to my own question ? is this the edge of the universe ?

Leave it alone. Let ‘weeds’ grow, any that look good, keep, any that look horrible, pull out.

They have a flower bed at the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth which they did like this, virtually no effort to produce a good flower plot. Takes a few years though….

I’ve got a bit of garden that I can’t decide what to do with at the mo. So i’ve just sown the area with a variety of wildflowers – cheap and simple.
I bought these
http://www.meadowmania.co.uk/default.cfm/loadlevel.3/loadindex.117
No idea what the end result will be like though 🙂

Don’t be thinking its late – we’re still due some frosty nights yet . Keep popping into b+q to catch the point when they reduce the price of summer bedding plants . You can’t go wrong with bush lobelia and petunias ( colourful, carpeting ,low growing , cheap and the bees love ’em ). Good luck

dahlias

Some sort of wildflower mix might be good and low maintenance. Expect it to take a few years to establish though or try the cornfield annual type mix. Dont bother with ones with grass seed in though as grasses will already be in the seedbed and the ones in the seed mix will most likely come to dominate in rich garden soils.

try some dwarf nicotiana – open at night and release the most amazing smell.
difficult to find plugs though so you’ll need to be quick if you’re growing from seed.

how big is the space, how deep is it front to back? whereabouts in the garden is it? what aspect? Flowering shrub, or perennial/annual flowers? What time of year do you want it flowering?

Go for a variety of wildflowers or meadow mix, that’s what I have done again this year.

Sunflowers are also easy to grow and add impact to a garden, they always put a smile on my face anyway 😉

Something more useful might be worth trying as well, do a mix of herbs in pots, not the smoking type btw 😉

Try some chilli peppers and Tomatoes which work in hanging baskets as well.

nasturtiums (you can eat the flowers in salads)and calendula (pot marigolds) are colourful, grow easily from seed and are pretty hardy.
Both will set seeds which can be gathered and used for next year.

You can buy a lavender plant for a few quid and it will last ages, if you want hardy herbs go for rosemary, mint, lemon balm, sage and thyme, all will survive all but the most savage of winters and you shouldn’t pay more than £1-2 for a plant that can just be planted straight into the ground.

For a few quid more get a bay, hardy evergreen herb which grows well and is frost hardy.

If you want easy veg, go for courgettes (if you have the room), radishes, tomatoes (cherry variety may be easier and are more blight resistant) and a packet of salad mix.

i may well go with the sunflower ! well it may give my godson some thing to rip down anyway !, cheers for all the ideas im going to plant some of the the above ….suffice to say im not a a gardener !

Go for edible! A trip to Tesco’s or wherever, buy their herbs in pots in the greengrocery and then plant them in some dugover soil at home. Remove the pot first. Parsley, chives, thyme, corriander. Put basil in next month (warmer). And Garlic is mega-easy, having broken the bulb into cloves first.

Strawberries are ace too, wild ones gathered and transplanted from a mate’s house are even better- much smaller, sweeter and far more intense. Not like the strawberries most people buy in the shops.

From seed- nasturtiums and lobelias are really easy, sunflowers too if not a windy area. Rudbeckia are nice- giant daisies.