For answers to some of the most commonly asked gardening questions, click through our gallery of fantastic tips from the lovely Alan Titchmarsh.

Feature by Karen O'Grady

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The questions to ask are: Is it a grafted plant? Is it on a sunny wall? Do you feed it, and do you prune it? If you've bought a grafted plant and you prune it in January (shortening all the side-shoots to finger length), and you also prune it in July (shortening all those long-questing growths to about a foot), and you've got it on a sunny wall, and you give it some rose fertiliser in March... it should flower. If it doesn't, dig it up, throw it away and buy a new one, because you've got a flower-shy variety that obviously isn't doing well.

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It's always difficult with slugs and snails - you can try growing plants they don't like to eat. I find copper collars are quite good - you can put them around hostas when they're just coming through. You'll find that some hostas are more resistant to them than others - careful plant selection will get you out of a lot of problems.

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It depends whether the window box is in sun or shade. If it's shady, then busy lizzies are hard to beat for summer colour. I would always have two schemes in a window box - a winter-come-spring one, and a summer one. At the moment I've got universal pansies (winter flowering pansies) with little dwarf narcissi coming up through them. When they're all finished I'll whip them out and put in summer flowers. What you can also do is have some permanent residents, perhaps a few ivies trailing from the front that are left in for both winter and summer arrangements.

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Look towards raising up your garden to meet you - use tubs or pots that you find more easily accessible. If you can't cultivate the whole garden, then put some of it down to gravel and have plants growing up through the gravel, which makes for easy maintenance. You don't have to give up gardening, even when you think that your body is giving up!

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The most important thing is to only grow things that you love eating! If  you like them, radish are very quick. Lettuces are really easy - just don't sow long rows of lettuce; sow three foot rows at time with two week intervals so you have some dotted around, rather than having them all grouped together. Simply grow the veg you like and then work out what you've space for.

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Look at your site properly, being aware of the path of the sun. It's the really obvious, practical things that people often overlook. Do you want sun or shade? And what materials will be best to use? Consider how big a patio area needs to be - do you want to dine there? In which case a table and four chairs - or six if you're a larger family - will take up more room than you think. Measure it out!

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Just by gardening you're saving money, seeds are still great value for money. Gardening has always been ‘credit-crunch' friendly because you're growing your own - you don't cost your labour into growing vegetables. But the pleasure and comfort you get out of growing things is great therapy. There is great pleasure in picking something yourself, taking it inside, and cooking it. And getting it onto the plate within the hour means that your crops are sweeter - because the sugar hasn't turned to starch. 

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The style of the house makes a good starting point. It's always better to come off the house in my view with straight lines. If you come off with a curve the two don't complement one another. Look at the size, the scale, the shape of the house and the materials of the house as well. If the house is brick, then maybe a brick path would complement it. Look at your house when you're in the garden, as the house will be the backdrop, you want the garden to complement the house. And then, it comes down to your own tastes, whether you like a formal or informal design.

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Create a cottage garden

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Remember you do have a choice when it comes to being eco-friendly. Don't use pesticides, you'll notice you get the odd nibble here and there but the garden is not something to be contained, it's a living thing. It's living, breathing, natural, so perfection isn't there. It's not like painting a room. Things go wrong, but it's learning to accept that, and not getting quite so uptight about it when it goes wrong. Enjoying the best bits. If there's a hole in the hosta leaf, pull your chair a little bit further away so you can't see it!

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