Start creating your own tiny garden with these 5 best garden plants for beginners

Gardening is not as hard as you think it is.

Yes, there will always be people who know more than you, but that’s true of everything in life. It’s easy to start gardening, and I’ll guide you through the best garden plants for beginners. Before you know it, you’ll be the proud owner of a beautiful and flourishing tiny garden.

My expertise lies in helping people to make the most of their tiny garden. Whether that’s a sunny windowsill, a draughty balcony or a paved backyard. Maybe you have more space than that—lucky you. But the basic principles still apply, regardless of space. 

What a beginner gardener needs to know

Before you rush out to the garden centre, and look for the best plants for your garden, it’s a great idea to do a tiny bit of planning first. Have a think about these questions:

Which direction does your tiny garden face?

You probably have a compass app on your phone. Stand where you want to plant, whether that’s on your front door steps or by a windowsill. If your compass points south, then that will be a sunny spot. If it’s north, it’ll be in shade for most of the year. If it’s east or west, it’ll be partially sunny and partially shaded.

You need to know how much sun your tiny garden area will get, so you can choose plants accurately. You could be the best gardener in the world and still not get gorgeous blooms on your rose because it’s not getting enough light.

What do you love about plants?

Do you like the idea of growing your own fruit or vegetables? Does this idea of cutting flowers for your house fill you with joy? Perhaps you hanker after some scented foliage?

Knowing more about what it is about gardening that excites you will keep you going when it’s a bit dull. And watering and repotting can get repetitive. 

How much time will you have for gardening?

Very important one here. Please be realistic. I’ve been there, and so has every gardener I’ve ever known. It’s easy to get carried away and choose luscious tender plants which need a lot of care and attention, especially in our challenging British weather. 

Unless you have plenty of time, you’ll get better results more easily if you stick with some of my suggestions. I’m a huge fan of making things as simple for yourself as possible. I don’t have hours to spend faffing in the garden, so all my recommendations are deliberately chosen because they’ve survived despite my haphazard, and sometimes, frankly neglectful approach. Because life happens and we’re all busy.

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Now you’ve had some time to think about what you’d like to grow in your garden, I’ll give you my top recommendations for the best garden plants for beginners. These are, quite simply, the most forgiving, easy going plants you can grow. 

All can be planted in containers/pots or in the ground. 

These plants will all thrive in sunny or partially shaded spots.

Almost all the plants, shrubs and trees I recommend are low maintenance, easy care and pollinator friendly. Except for tulips, because how could I resist the outrageous flamboyance of their satin petals? 

1. Hardy geranium

If I had to choose only one garden plant for beginner gardeners, it would be a hardy geranium. Hardy in plant terms means it will survive being in the garden in the winter. 

They come in wildly differing colours from the hottest magenta, through cornflower blue to moon white. They can start flowering in early spring and keep going for months. And months. And months. If you can be bothered to snip off the faded flowers, they will go on for longer. 

Bees flock to hardy geraniums, as will ladybirds and hoverflies. You’ll be providing a long lasting source of nectar and pollen for all these precious pollinators. 

I must emphasise that I’m talking about hardy geraniums here. Not pelargoniums. Which are beautiful, but they’ll need to come inside for the winter if there’s any chance of frost where you live. 

2. Honeysuckle

Most of us have a bit of our garden which could do with a bit of screening. Perhaps a scruffy shed, a peeling wall or a row of bins. Honeysuckles are great for gently scrambling over and up, well, anything really. They’re very easy to grow and are an ideal garden plant for beginners. They’ll twist and twine (and you can help them here) around railings, a trellis, or some garden string between nails. 

You can get evergreen honeysuckle, which will keep its leaves through winter, unless there’s heavy snow. There are varieties which have glowing ruby and soft gold flowers, or more subtle buttercream and silver ones. All breathe their sweet scent into the summer air, especially in the evening.

3. Rose

Now this one often surprises people, when I recommend it as a great garden plant for beginners. Roses are NOT difficult to grow. In fact, they’re one of the easiest garden plants to look after, even for beginners. Because once they’re planted, you don’t really need to do anything. Well, okay, if it’s planted in a container, then you’ll have to water it. But that apart, it will happily do its thing for years. Decades even.

If you have a sunny spot in your tiny garden, then you can choose from hundreds of varieties. If you have a shady spot, you’ll need to be more selective, but it’s absolutely possible to grow a rose in the shade.

If you can, try to find a repeat flowering variety, which will keep you in festoons of flowers for months. I love scented varieties, and you can get open-centred roses which attract pollinators too.

4. Rosemary

A brilliant choice for green all year round, especially if you have a sunny spot in your tiny garden. It’ll reward you (and the bees) with tiny, delicate blue/lilac flowers in early spring too. 

The evergreen foliage is scented and makes a wonderful addition to hearty winter soups and stews, especially when fresh herbs are scarce. 

5. Nepeta

Perhaps this is the least known of this list of the best garden plants for beginners. You might know it better as catmint. It has soft and felty foliage which smells lemony and minty when you crush it between your fingers.

Like the hardy geranium I mentioned earlier, this is a hardy perennial, which means it will die back in the winter. It may disappear completely underground, and you might think it’s dead, but it’s just having a long winter snooze.

It’ll wake up in spring, and produce lots of fragrant foliage before bursting into clouds of frothy pale pink and lilac blooms. It flowers for months and months, and is a bee magnet. Butterflies, ladybirds and hoverflies also love it.

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So, now you know the questions you’ll need to think about before you start your gardening adventure. And you have a list of five of the best garden plants for beginners to give you some inspiration for your low maintenance, easy care, pollinator friendly garden.

Which one are you tempted to plant first?