Small gardens, like small rooms, always look better for being neat and tidy – unless you’re deliberately cultivating the wild look. The problem, of course, is finding the time to keep everything shipshape but luckily with just a few hours of effort in the spring, you can make a big difference to the look of your garden for the rest of the year.

Whilst small spaces do not readily lend themselves to water features and ponds, there are ways to create a space with water. City gardens are not just a little bit of calm in an otherwise manic world, but are also great for introducing wildlife, and ponds are no exception to this.

We take a trip to the nursery or garden centre and return home with booty which promises to transform our garden spaces. Full of good intentions, but too busy to check, the next time we look at our plants, we find them at their last gasp and requiring resuscitation. Before last rites are performed, we explain how to care for distressed plants and bring them back to life and suggest some simple procedures to reduce casualties in the future.

Roger Phillips should have grown up hating foraging. As a boy during the war, he was sent to the safety of Hertfordshire, and one of his duties at his village school, as food was short, was to pick nettle tops every morning to be boiled by the cook for lunch. “There were lots of babies and our job as the older children, being six or seven, was to feed them the nettle pulp. It wasn’t flavoured or anything so the babies weren’t necessarily all that keen on it and usually blew it straight back into our faces,” he recalls. Not the most inspirational of starts and yet he has gone on to become one of Britain’s leading experts on mushrooms and wild food in general.

Advertisement feature by Westbury Garden Rooms, Essex-based builders of bespoke garden rooms, orangeries, pool houses and roof lanterns, founded over 25 years ago, who share tips on how to plan gardens worth looking at from their rooms with a view.

The path of container gardening is paved with good intentions. It begins with gleaming specimens in shiny pots, but a walk down any street too often reveals only desiccated, overgrown and weather-beaten remnants of those former splendours. So here’s how to give your neglected pots a beauty overhaul to get them back in shape and set up good routines for the future.

Got a bit of garden as bare as a dieter’s fridge and wanting to transform it into a stunning border? Here Lucy Summers tells you how to plan, prepare and create a border that will fill you with the joys of spring.

It’s that time of the year again, when we do our best to buy the perfect gift for our green-fingered loved ones. In theory it’s easy to buy gifts for gardeners – we know they like plants and wellies. In practice it’s a little more tricky, as new plants may not be the right fit for the garden, and another trowel may not be required. Here are a few ideas if you’re struggling to shop for those who grow.

The war against weeds isn’t one that can be won, but now that winter is here there’s plenty that you can do to avoid having major problems - or spending hours weeding - next year.

Square Foot Gardening is a set of techniques for creating and maintaining a productive vegetable garden in a small space, without it being labour intensive.It’s a perennial favourite because it makes growing your own as simple as possible especially for new gardeners.