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Last year I sowed all my seeds in the first week of January, eager to get my brand new garden off to a flying start. Everything was sown at once - from Eryngium leavenworthii to tomato 'Gardener's Delight' and my front room looked like a badly run

My first job when I moved into my flat last August was to remove the paving stones in the back yard. Now, after five months of having a building site for a garden, I have bought myself some Christmas topsoil, and I'm itching to get seed sowing

arrangements.I acquired the seed of my white honesty about five years ago, from a man who had cut down his spent plants and left them in a pile in his front garden. He was happy for me to help myself so I filled my pockets with seed and took them home.I sowed

grass seed - one mix for shady areas, one regular blend and one with wildflower seeds - and watched the pigeons eat it all up. We made a scarecrow with a mop, a garden fork, an old shirt and some plastic bags and sowed some more. The pigeons didn't like

before it’s flowered, but I can’t help leaving a few around the edge to provide food for wildlife.I hate seeing bare earth in my garden. If I expose the soil I sow a few seeds of red clover on the surface, which germinate quickly and provide some ground

imported topsoil, then tried (and failed) to sow a lawn from seed.I watched the evolution of the plot from courtyard to garden as more and more creatures visited it - blue tits and great tits, a robin, blackbird, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, slugs

to pests and diseases, and (most importantly) much quicker to crop.This is where they become exciting: aubergines are normally quite tricky to grow. They're best raised in a warm greenhouse, and if you sow seed later than March, you’re in danger of losing

, so I'll go back for them another time.)I can't wait to get sowing on the weekend. I'll remove the seeds from their (now swollen) hips and sow them in a pot of fresh compost. As the seeds require a good dose of cold, followed by a warm spell

. My mini balcony compost heap, however, was perfect.The following year I got my first allotment. I made mistakes there too. I sowed radish seeds in trays to transplant (and got laughed at by my new allotment friends), I planted potatoes in frosty

Two years, I felt the need to grow a local, native plant in my garden. I gathered rosehips from a field rose at the edge of a nearby canal, soaked them in water and sowed the seed in coarse compost.The pots sat in a corner of my patio, doing nothing