You don’t need to spend much to get into gardening – a little bit of effort and some thoughtful recycling will go far. Here are our top tips for low-cost cultivation

Visit the average garden centre and you might assume it costs a lot of money to get into gardening, but that isn’t the case. No matter how many products and plants are on offer, or how relentlessly the Instagram ads insist, gardening is not shopping. My focus in the garden has always been the plants, not the paraphernalia.

Thankfully, the tide is turning towards low-intervention, nature-centric gardening , which works well for those who don’t have much to spend. You don’t need a traditional garden to start growing, either, as many indoor and outdoor spaces – balconies, porches, windowsills – can be used for pots, as long as the the plants catch the sun.