Garden on a Roll Makes Garden Planning as Simple as Planting by Numbers

So you have moved into you brand new house and you have a blank expanse of turf which was installed by the builder. You have no idea which plants will thrive in the soil. You don’t know what to plant, when to plant it or how far apart to plant the plants.

Now I have always been a lover of GQT (Gardeners Question Time) on BBC Radio 4, and I used to class myself as a young fogey because of that –although as time has passed by I suspect I may be just a fogey these days. I have picked up loads of good advice from the team on the way, but mostly I have learned that gardening is supposed to be fun, enjoyable and you are allowed to make mistakes and experiment a little. After all when you consider the price of a cup of coffee of a pint a beer a few quid on a plant is not much to worry about, even if it doesn’t thrive where you put it.

That said, the idea of trying to plan a whole plot is still a bit beyond me, so when I spotted the Garden on a Roll at the National Homebuilding Show at Olympia last week I was intrigued. Apparently I am a bit late to the party, because the idea was invented by TV Gardener Antony Henn in 2008, still better late than never.

The idea is brilliantly simple you get a planting plan printed onto either biodegradable paper or onto weed fabric depending on your preference. Then you just plant the plants according to the letter on the pot and the corresponding letter on the plan – a bit like painting by numbers, but actually planting by letters.

Garden on a Roll deliver everything you need – the plan, the plants, and some simple tools, like ground pegs, trowel, gloves, plus fertilizer, some packets of seeds and a DVD to tell you what to do.

You pick the style from one of the professionally designed borders, and you simply pick the length and width you need for your plot. You can choose from various border plans depending on the effect you want and the location of your bed in the garden. Plans include Bee and Butterfly; Sensory; Mixed Shady; Mixed Sunny; evergreen low maintenance or Mediterranean. There are also planting options for edible gardens. For more information on Garden Planting choices visit the Gardenonaroll website.

It’s as simple as that.

If you decide to give this ‘groundbreaking’ gardening invention a try in your garden, we would love to get some before and after photos from you, or even a video diary of your efforts. Go to our feedback page to tell us how you got on.