As a new gardener with little horticultural experience, the prospect of cultivating your own piece of ground may, at first, appear a little daunting. However, as long as you take into account one or two pieces of important advice, planning your first garden should be neither difficult nor stressful.

To begin with, it is always a good idea to draw up a plan of your ideal garden. This may sound relatively simple, but, you'll find that a detailed sketch, including plant varieties and so on will probably take some work to put together.

Before you can get stuck into the business of gardening and even before you can complete the initial blueprint of your space, you'll need to sort out a few fundamental facts. For starters, you should head for your local garden centre with a beaker of earth from one of your potential flower beds. Once there, ask the attendant if it's possible for him or her to cast an expert eye over the soil.

This will tell you what kind of ground you are dealing with in your project, and will thus help you to select appropriate varieties of plants. Remember that if you choose plants that don't do well in your soil, you will end up with a garden full of sad, undersized plants.

Gardening is not, perhaps, quite as difficult and daunting as you may believe it to be. However, it isn't a walk in the park either; horticultural success can be achieved through a combination of foresight, research and a willingness to listen to the advice of the experts.