Top tips will help to create the best gardens
CELEBRITY gardener Christine Walkden visited the final day of the Southport Flower Show to share her green-fingered wisdom.
The One Show favourite greeted crowds and viewed the fabulous show gardens, before giving some great tips to novice and expert gardeners alike.
Christine praised the gardens on show and said the thing she loved best about the Southport Flower Show was that the standard continued to grow.
She said: “I love the show gardens, I love the marquees.
“What I love about Southport though is that the standard continues to climb year and year and that is what you want to see in a show. There are always crowds of people here and everyone has a really good time.”
Christine said her own garden was like “a zoo” but her favourite gardens were those that were well situated in their environment.
She said: “A garden should reflect the personality of the owner, a modern garden would look terrible in a farmhouse cottage, but in a new build it would look fantastic.
“My own garden is like a zoo and is absolutely jam packed with plants, I could do with a designer to be honest.”
Her top tips for novice gardeners included never giving up and reading the instructions on every packet.
She said: “People need to prepare their soil and make sure they read the flower packets, if it says sow in March but it’s freezing just use your common sense.
“Make sure you’ve got the best varieties of plants for the part of your country that you’re in, go down to the allotments and speak to the people who’ve been growing things for you. Water before and after planting – but most of all, just have fun with it!”