The City Gardener: Urban Oasis

Channel 4’s The City Gardener, Matt James, is back with a new series and a new book, full of practical advice and design inspiration to turn your weed-filled wasteland into the hippest urban playground on the block!

• Where to start – in this first section Matt gets straight down to business, providing practical answers to the question all first-time gardeners ask, ‘where on earth do I start?!’, including: how to carry out a site survey, deciding what style of garden you want and how to reflect your lifestyle in the design, where to buy plants and how to spot a good one.

• Making the skeleton – this is where we begin to get creative and learn how to plan out a garden, starting with the bare bones of the basic structure and moving onto how to hard landscape your design, turning theory into practice

• The Range of Plants – an introduction to the different plant types and how each can be used to combat an urban-specific problem like noise pollution, or create a particular effect, such as lending architectural form or providing seasonal interest

• Putting It All Together – this is where Matt shows how to bring together everything you’ve learnt about planning, hard landscaping and plants to create sensational planting layouts; specific topics covered include using height and space, colour, texture and scent, and planting styles such as prairie, formal and exotic, to create the garden you want

• Plant Directory – a problem-solving look at the best plants for particular places and conditions e.g. plants for damp spots, shady corners, specific soil types and garden aspect