How to Keep Your Garden Looking Beautiful – 20 great ideas for inspiration

We all lead busy lives and keeping your garden tidy and looking good is no easy task. Here are some simple tips that even beginner gardeners can follow to help keep your garden looking beautiful all year round.

Take Care of the Lawn

Regularly mowing and watering your lawn will ensure that the grass remains healthy and your garden looks good. You might also want to choose a patch or section of lawn and allow it to ‘go wild’ as this has been shown to have multiple benefits for nature and wildlife. The RSPB has a handy how-to guide on lawn management and creating wildflower meadows in your garden to encourage wildlife and biodiversity.

Water Your Plants

It may seem obvious, but watering your plants is key to keeping your garden looking beautiful. However, it isn’t always easy to know how much, how often or when you should be watering the plants in your garden.

As a general rule, seedlings and young plants need more frequent watering than more established, older plants, as do recently re-potted plants. Plants growing in sunny spots will need more water than those growing in the shade and all plants will need more water during hot weather than they will throughout autumn and winter.

On hot days, you should water plants in the evening and be careful not to splash leaves with water as this can cause scorching. On colder days, it’s better to water in the morning so your plants dry out before the temperatures drop overnight.

Feed Your Plants

Feeding plants provides them with essential nutrients such as nitrogen to aid leaf growth and potassium, encouraging flowers and fruits to grow. In the wild, plants get this from decomposing materials like leaf litter in the soil but this doesn’t always happen in gardens as we often ‘tidy up’ fallen leaves. Instead, you can use organic fertilisers to replace nutrients in your garden soil and keep your plants healthy.

Protect Your Plants

For your garden to truly flourish, you’ll need to protect plants from pets, pests and diseases. You can use a garden cloche to protect your flowers or vegetable patch from pests, birds or adverse weather conditions like high winds or frost. Protecting your plants in this way prevents them from becoming damaged and ensures your gardening efforts don’t go to waste.

Take Care of Weeds

Weeding can seem like a never-ending job for gardeners and in a way, that’s because it is! However, when it comes to weeding you can use the ever-changing British weather to your advantage. After a rainy spell, the ground is soft and weeds can be pulled easily from the soil and all you’ll need is a pair of gloves. In dry conditions, use a sharp-edged hoe to slice off weeds just below the surface. Any root remaining beneath will soon shrivel up and die.

Liven It Up

Add mixed containers to your garden to liven it up. You could use hanging pots or baskets as well as patio pots, planters and window boxes to add some character to your garden. This is perfect for smaller gardens and you can even grow some fruits and vegetables in containers too. Choose brightly coloured pots and plants to make them stand out, adding that ‘wow factor’ and you’ll have your garden looking beautiful in no time at all.