Gardening

Making Connections from Home > Gardening

If you’re stuck at home and have a garden that’s been a little neglected recently, now is the perfect time to pick up the trough and get gardening again. But where do you start? On this page we have guides for those who have no gardening experience on how to get started, as well as guides on how to promote British wildlife with your garden, practice wildlife photography, and take part in national wildlife monitoring schemes.

If you know of any resources missing from this list, please let us know by filling out this form.

Getting started with gardening 

Here are some useful websites that teach you the basics of gardening if you don’t know where to start: 

• Royal Horticultural Society: Beginner’s Guide – an accessible introduction to gardening containing lost of ideas on how to develop your garden 
• BBC Gardening – an older site but still a brilliant practical introduction to gardening with a huge range of guides 
• Gardeners’ World – has a good set of how-to guides for getting started with gardening 
• Own the Garden – a beginners’ guide to starting your first garden.

Helping wildlife 

There are lots of things you can do to improve the diversity of British wildlife using your garden – from attracting butterflies or bumblebees to your garden to building a hedgehog home or a bird feeder. Here are some resources to get you started: 

• Kent Wildlife Trust: Simple things you can do to help wildlife – A wide range of easy-to-follow guides 
• Discover Wildlife: Wildlife Gardening – A set of guides on wildlife gardening from the BBC 

Wildlife monitoring 

Anyone with a garden can monitor the wildlife in it and help contribute to national monitoring schemes. Whether this is something you want to take part in, or whether you just want to do it for fun, here are some guides to monitoring wildlife in your garden: 

• Discover Wildlife: How to monitor your garden wildlife – comprehensive guide from the BBC 
• ISpot – a free community where you can upload a picture of wildlife you’ve captured and others will identify it. Great for beginner wildlife enthusiasts. 

• IRecord – national site for recording what you’ve observed so that it can be added to national monitoring efforts. 
• Discover wildlife on your doorstep – a guide to getting started with wildlife monitoring with specific schemes you can join now – including the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme. 

Wildlife photography 

• Discover Wildlife: Photograph Wildlife – lots of guides from the BBC on wildlife photography including how to improve your insect photography, how to photograph urban wildlife and how to film wildlife in your garden 

• WildlifePhoto – free online wildlife photography course by UK photographer Will Burrard-Lucas