Gardens: No time to devote to your poor old plot? Thirty minutes is all you need

THERE are government recommendations for exercise, but what about gardening? Is there a minimum weekly time commitment that will keep our gardens healthy?

Perhaps there aren’t any official guidelines, but if you want to spend more time enjoying your garden and less time feeling overwhelmed by a long list of tasks, a new book by Jenny Hendy should set you on the right track. 30-Minute Gardening (£12.99, Dorling Kindersley) is filled with focused activities to achieve maximum results when time is limited. “Most of us have crazy lives these days. It’s sheer luxury if you actually get to spend an afternoon in the garden let alone a whole weekend,” says Hendy. “Knowing that there’s something you can achieve in a very short time slot is a great incentive to get out there and not to keep putting things off.”

Hendy says getting organised beforehand is the key. As well as having a basic kit of garden tools that are all kept in the one place, she also says it’s worth having a stock of sundry items to hand so you don’t have to make a trip to the garden centre every time you want to start a new job. If you’ve got items like gel crystals, granular fertiliser, glyphosate weedkiller, garden twine, multi-purpose compost and gravel in the shed, then you can get on with the serious business of gardening without delay. “Know where all your tools and materials are and then disregard all the other jobs that need doing, she says. “Just focus on achieving one task. It helps you regain the feeling of being in control.”

The book is filled with photographs and is broken down into sections which focus on different areas of the garden, such as patios, borders and growing edibles. For every area of the garden there are ideas for instant impact and jobs you could tackle if you’ve got more time. So are there any particularly time-consuming garden elements that are best avoided if you’re watching the clock?

“The old fashioned bedding arrangements using seasonal bulbs, annuals and biennials are incredibly time-consuming as you have to dig everything out and replace them two or three times a year,” says Hendy. “It’s much easier to plant beds and borders with hardy plants such as long-flowering perennials, colourful evergreen foliage and compact flowering shrubs. Many of these can also be used in containers in place of traditional bedding or tender patio plants.” If you do opt for containers she suggests installing automatic irrigation for pots or sticking to drought tolerant plants that need very little attention.

Most people have a list of quick tricks to tidy up the house when guests are due to visit. When it comes to gardens, there are equivalent jobs that can really make the overall picture look smarter. “Mowing the lawn and edging it has the same effect as vacuuming and plumping up the pillows in the living room,” says Hendy. “The garden instantly feels cared for. The patio is another area I’d target. Clear the clutter: remove anything that shouldn’t be there and take off display all the pots that are empty, weedy or contain plants that are dead or going over.” She says that you can then rearrange the remaining pots to create an attractive arrangement, perhaps lifting some smaller pots up on bricks or steps to give them more prominence. Really short on time? “A five-minute primping session entailing dead-heading faded flowers and cutting back overlong stems on climbers and shrubs also works wonders,” says Hendy.

If you want to add impact to the garden without spending a lot of time or money on a complete makeover, Hendy has a range of suggestions to choose from. Even the best-planned border can be flat and featureless at certain times of year, so she suggests adding a metal or wooden obelisk to create instant height and sculptural interest or set a tall unplanted container or pot on a plinth amongst the foliage. The textural contrast should really draw the eye. “Another theatrical touch is to give a bench seat or wooden chair a vibrant splash of colour using one of the outdoor paint-stain products,” she says. “Brighten a dull wall or fence by standing a large container in front and plant this up with colour schemed flowers and foliage - add something unexpected and exotic too such as a canna, a black-leaved dahlia or even a banana.”

Fruit-growing might seem daunting to gardeners who’ve not tried it before, but within the 30-minute timescale you could easily plant up a blueberry pot, a strawberry hanging basket or a dwarf fruit tree. Hendy says that one of the fastest and most satisfying edible crops you can grow is “posh” lettuce and salad varieties. “They are so easy to grow from seed,” she says. “Sow a few direct in pots every couple of weeks – any old container will do as long as it has drainage, and you can even use shallow wooden fruit boxes lined with plastic. Fresh leaves are so much tastier than shop-bought bagged salads and the choice of seed mixtures means that you always have something new to try.”

30-Minute Gardening is full of creative projects, from creating a mini waterlily pond to advice on where to place sculpture. It seems that rather than just keeping on top of the dull garden jobs, a few 30-minute sessions a week will give you enough time to express your artistic side too. “You might need to start with a few sessions that are purely maintenance but pretty soon you’ll be able to work in some more creative projects,” says Hendy. “As you tidy up an area, it’s nice to put the icing on the cake. For example you might plant up a small collection of cottage garden plants, try a spot of DIY sculpture, make a framed topiary chicken or hang a mirror to add sparkle to a shady corner.” Whatever you choose to spend your half hour doing, this book provides reassurance that it will make a difference to your garden.

• 30-Minute Gardening by Jenny Hendy is published by Dorling Kindersley, priced £12.99