As winter eases and spring beckons, longer days bring the garden to life – and your growing year starts here…

It’s time for sowing, planting alpine containers and living screens and tidying up old growth

Sow courgette and squash seeds now so you’ll have seedlings ready to plant outside in early summer. Fill pots or large module trays with peat-free multi-purpose compost. Place one seed in each pot, ab

Growing vegetables was my introduction to gardening when we created a tiny veg patch 14 years ago. While it sparked a career change into gardening, design and writing, growing vegetables has remained

Work your way through your borders, removing dandelion flowerheads before they get the chance to set seed. Flowers of dandelions are a useful source of early nectar for pollinators but if they are abl

There are some vegetables that thrive in the cold, but unless you aspire to self-sufficiency Tom Coward recommends caution when sowing very early in the year. “It’s a mistake, although we always do it