Here are fifteen ways to get a gorgeous garden with the least possible effort, so you can spend the summer where you belong – in a deck-chair.

1. Choose plants weeds hate.
Ground-hugging plants are ideal for this as they naturally suppress them. Scented, low-growing herbs like camomile and thyme, as well as periwinkle – are all good buys. Put them in borders and places weeds always take hold, like the gaps between paving. Squeeze weeds out by putting plants close together so there’s no bare soil for them to grow in. The smaller and narrower your borders are, the less room weeds have to take hold, so reduce the size of big borders with gravel or paving.

2. Get colour effortlessly
Plants that hardly need any attention to look fabulous sometimes lack colour, so if you’re planting box, rosemary or ornamental grasses, put the, in brightly coloured pots and they’ll look good all the year round.

Read the rest of this entry »