Bob takes the easy route...

By Bob Flowerdew

Bob Flowerdew has tips on simplifying your gardening, using young veg plants in modules and experimenting with mail-order mini plants

'A whole bed, even the entire garden, can be surprisingly colourful throughout most of the year by filling it with nothing but bulbs.'

Ditch the under-performers Don't persist with plants that under-perform and give you insufficient reward for your time and work. While large, established trees are difficult to get rid of (especially as you may need council permission, so enquire before getting the chainsaw out), small trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants are not a lot of work to dig up and burn or dispose of.

Make maintenance easier Simplify your garden to make maintenance easier. Consider, for instance, putting a long, overgrown and weed-infested bed or border down to grass instead. It will look neater, be easier to maintain and can be brightened up with a few choice urns or planters of bedding plants or bulbs.

Amalgamate beds and borders, if you can, and make them more rounded instead of rectilinear as this can save you yards of edge, which you have to keep trimmed.

Replace narrow grass paths with stepping stones and likewise any worn patches. It's daft replacing a worn-out spot of turf with a new piece, which will wear away in turn. Put a stepping stone there instead and the job's done.

Veg plants in modules Take time to plant and draw up the vegetable plot and buy or order seeds. I must say, being able to buy young vegetable plants in modules from garden centres is a great boon and worth more to me than the mail-order ones. On the whole, however, I do think the latter are often better value and more convenient, even though they have to be ordered in advance.

Use garden centre plants as backup Garden centre plants are useful for their backup value. I sow and start off all my own plants but if, and it does happen, I get a total wipeout, then I can pop down the road and buy substitutes already grown and ready to go. This happened last spring when my tray of young sweet pepper plants was overturned by one of my darling cats and then demolished by a hen who kept sneaking in to scratch around. The replacement seedlings were cooked by my own error when I then left the propagator shut on a hot afternoon spent chasing that same hen out of the vegetable bed every half hour or so. It was getting too late to sow and I did not have enough good plants, so I bought some sweet pepper plants from a local garden centre. They did the job fine. They were not quite as vigorous as my own, but that is probably due to them waiting for sale in quite cool conditions. Leek plants trialled against my own seedlings did do very well, indeed comparable with my best.

Mail order mini plants and combinations Mail-order mini plants can be very useful for discovering plants that you are not familiar with. The catalogues are full of pictures of the results, and often offer combinations suitable for a hanging basket, tub or even a whole bed of a given size. You pay your money and the entire collection arrives for you to grow on and plant up in due time. I have tried some of these and they are excellent for acquiring an interesting selection of good choices.

Use bulbs for colour Use bulb catalogues for even more instant gardening. A whole bed, even the entire garden, can be surprisingly colourful throughout most of the year by filling it with nothing but bulbs. Although not a cheap option, such a display rarely fails to attract the attention of passers-by. And, other than weeding, you will have little to do for your show.

This is what winter's for – reading the catalogues and fantasising about a new year of gardening!

For further gardening advice, hints and tips, go to www.gardensmonthly.co.uk