Gardening is a great way to get more fresh vegetables and flowers in your home. However, it’s also a lot of work.

So, if you’re a new gardener, it’s important to keep a few tips in mind before getting started. With these tips, you’ll have a much better chance of cultivating a green thumb and keeping your garden happy and healthy.

Choose Your Plants Wisely

When you plant wisely, it’s easier to keep your garden looking beautiful without sacrificing time or money. This means choosing plants that thrive in your local climate, soil and wildlife challenges.

You’ll also want to consider low water use or drought tolerant plants. This saves you from overwatering and the hassle of reversing that practice in summer.

Insect resistant and disease-resistant varieties are available.

If you have a pool or pond, choose landscape plants that won’t be harmed by the water. These include flowering trees and shrubs.

Avoid planting vines, such as clematis and wisteria. They can be invasive and spread quickly in your yard. Instead, pick perennial plants that don’t require pruning and replanting every year.

Don’t Forget About Sunlight

Sunlight is the essential ingredient that plants use to make their own food, a process called photosynthesis. The green pigment in plant leaves, chlorophyll, captures energy from the sun and carbon dioxide in the air to create sugars and oxygen.

Gardeners often make the mistake of putting plants in where they get too much or too little sunlight, and this can have devastating results on the growth of their garden.

To help ensure you’re planting the right things in the right place, map out your garden’s exposure to sun. This can be as simple as measuring the amount of sun that hits a garden area each hour, but it’s a great way to identify what areas are getting full sun, and those that need some shade.

Don’t Overwater

Overwatering can be devastating to your plant’s health. Waterlogged roots can’t absorb the oxygen they need to function properly, so your plant will eventually die.

Luckily, it’s easy to avoid overwatering your plants by making sure they don’t have any excess water sitting at the bottom of their pots! This can be done by buying pots that have drainage holes in them.

Overwatering can also cause root rot, which leads to yellowing leaves and fungal infections on the plant’s roots. If your plant starts to develop these symptoms, it’s time to cut it down and repot it in fresh soil. It will take some time for the plant to recover, but it can do so!

Don’t Skip the Vegetables

While it’s tempting to skip the vegetables when planting a vegetable garden, you’ll be better off if you don’t. Vegetables have specific needs and are more susceptible to pests, diseases, and weeds than flowers or herbs.

Vegetables are also more likely to produce if they’re given enough sunlight. So choose a spot that gets at least six hours of sun per day.

If you’re a beginner, start with just a few vegetables and add more each year. Keeping track of what you grow, when you plant, where you plant it and how it does is a good way to learn and remember what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

One of the most important tips for new gardeners is not to be afraid to fail. If you are afraid to fail you will never learn the valuable lessons that failure offers.

There is no single person who has ever successfully grown a garden that did not have a few failed attempts along the way. It is a learning process that takes time, patience, wisdom, and faith. Moreover, there is no guarantee that you will see a harvest. It is up to you to keep a vision for success and keep moving forward even when things do not seem to be going the way you had hoped. It is a hard, but incredibly rewarding journey. You may even end up with a beautiful garden in the end.