Spring-clean the garden

With spring budding, it's time to get your tools from the garden shed and start gardening again, advises the Press and Journal.

Daffodils, a good plant for those new to gardening, have bloomed, signalling the arrival of the season to begin some gardening jobs.

It's time to get the hoe from the back of the garden shed and tackle the weeds regularly while looking out for pests such as snails and slugs and dealing with them appropriately.

Other jobs that should now be started include trimming evergreen shrubs and plants and pruning flowers. Summer bedding plants are on sale but more frost is expected so a greenhouse could be a sound investment.

Alan Titchmarsh gave the newspaper some wise advice about buying a greenhouse: "Make it twice as big as you think you need because, however big a greenhouse you get, you will fill it to overflowing."

These jobs can be done without any expertise in gardening as enthusiasm is all someone needs to create a beautiful garden, suggests James Alexander-Sinclair in the Telegraph.