Alice Vincent: 30 things I’ve learnt during my first year in the garden

One year after taking on her first garden with actual soil, Alice Vincent has condensed everything she’s learned into 30 tips, from how to attract goldfinches to planting ‘late’

L ast year, when friends learnt I was graduating from a balcony to a garden, their response was almost universal. “You must be so excited!” they gasped, kindly. Sometimes it was easier to grin along and agree rather than admit the truth: I was terrified. Soil! Cats! Self-seeded things! Lawns! Balcony gardening was something of a corset, but I’d made myself quite at home within its whalebones over the previous six years. I’d battled pigeons and squirrels, dealt with drainage and rain shadows, and knew my way around rudimentary structural engineering. Now I was to embark on a brave new world of seasonal changes and fox poo. I felt deeply unqualified. A year on and the blank rectangle of turf with a dance floor-sized patio has grown up a little. A hollyhock peers over the top of the back wall, dahlias – the first I have ever grown – paint a rainbow where tulips stood three months ago. I’m the proud custodian of a new water butt, and nary a potato peel escapes the compost bin. This is the first baby step on a long journey of gardening – and this is everything I’ve learned so far.