How your garden can save you money

The sun is shining and spring has sprung, but this year no one's looking at your lupins or admiring your agapanthus. They're far more interested in seeing whether your tomato plants are flowering or the carrots are coming up...

In 2009, it's about food not flowers. More than a quarter of us are growing our own fruit and veg, with a further one in 10 considering that this will be the year they start. Sales of flowers have declined, as sales of vegetable seeds have risen by 128 per cent from last year and ready-to-plant vegetables by 40 per cent. For those who are planning to take it really seriously, sales of greenhouses are up by 157 per cent.

That's not all. The National Trust recently announced plans to use plots of its land for public allotments. In some areas, waiting lists can stretch to over 10 years and local papers are reporting record levels of interest as people to turn home growing in an effort to save money. Apparently there are now more than 100,000 people waiting to grab a small plot of land and try their hand at The Good Life.

And it can save you money. According to B&Q, growing your own fruit and veg might not make you totally self-sufficient but it can save you up to £200 a year. They found that those who grow their own spend around £9.25 a week on buying extras, while those who rely solely on the shops are spending £13.32 a week, which is a tidy saving over a 12-month period.

Joclyn Silezin, B&Q's horticulture buyer, says: "Grow-your-own wasn't just a passing craze. Britain seems to have embraced it and lots of people are finding ways to use even the smallest of spaces. You don't need to be an expert, or have a big garden, to discover the joys of growing your own."

So how to get started? The first point is, small gardens and roof terraces are no excuse. If your space isn't big on the ground, use the walls. Garden Trading has a wall-mounted shelf with space for hanging pots ideal for herbs (gardentrading.co.uk ; 0845 608 4448). Use a hanging basket for trailing tomatoes. Suttons (suttons.co.uk/tumbler ; 0844 922 0606) has a kit of three plants for under a tenner that will fit into a basket and free up precious floor space for a deck chair. Store (aplaceforeverything.co.uk ; 0870 224 2660) has produced a kit of three plastic pots with clever clips you can fix around the drainpipe and put herbs in, thus growing food and hiding an ugly object at the same time. For those with high walls and shady gardens, raising your pots can lift them into the available sunlight and help them to grow better.

If you're still worried about lack of space, you can even buy potatoes in special growing bags, which means you don't need acres of land to produce a decent crop. Use carrots and lettuces in neat rows along a window box.

This year, Lakeland, the doyen of kitchen gadgetry, has also moved into the garden business, which means loads of clever kit to help your garden grow. Chief among these for the lazy gardener, or just the one who has planned a summer holiday, is the Big Drippa Watering Kit (£11.95) which will look after your plants while you're away (lakeland.co.uk/garden ; 01539 488 100). For really small spaces, it has a range of sacks, complete with drainage holes, that you can stick on the smallest of balconies and plant with herbs and/or vegetables, and which can be reused year after year.

Wendy Miranda, the company's customer ambassador, says: "We provide plants that customers can take into the kitchen and that felt like a natural progression to us. Our seed collections include salads, chillies, peppers, peas beans and cabbages. For a nervous first-time grower, just pop some Charlotte salad potatoes in a patio grow-bag, cover with soil and put in a sunny spot with some water. Before you know it, you'll have a good crop. "It's the same with salad leaves. Plant them on a kitchen windowsill and you'll have home-grown salad in just a few weeks."

Miranda is adamant that you don't need much space: "I've only got a patio and I'm growing lots of herbs at the moment. Beans are great for tight spaces because they go up and you can grow tomatoes in hanging baskets – think about creating a vertical garden.

"The key is to do your research into when are the best planting times for your area. Use the internet or even pop down to the local allotments. They are usually a friendly bunch who are happy to share their knowledge." And knowledge is the key. There are plenty of products out there to buy, but many of us have lost the skills, or perhaps never had them, as to how to look after all this food we are growing.

B&Q has sent its staff on courses so they can pass the relevant knowledge onto the customer. Burford's garden centres (burford.co.uk ; 01993 823 117) have put together so-called "foolproof" collections of seeds for the beginner along with sections detailing the kit you will need, and the Royal Horticultural Society (rhs.org.uk ) has detailed information on growing fruit and veg with month-by-month advice and A to Z of produce.

So there are no excuses, get yourself a trowel, or even an old spoon, a packet of seeds and a few flower pots or an old biscuit tin – remember to put drainage holes in the bottom, and away you grow.