The summer season is now upon us, but it’s not too late to spruce up your garden in time for a fun summer barbecue. There’s only so much you can do with your rusty old gardening tools, however, so you might want to think about getting a landscape gardener in.

However, hiring a professional garden designer can be more expensive than you realise, especially if your outside space is in a right old state. This means that if you want a lush, perfectly contoured (and weed-free) lawn, bright and blooming flowerbeds and maybe even a soothing water feature, you’re going to have to find a way to boost your funds.

One idea is to try playing online bingo games, such as those at cheeky bingo. In all cheeky bingo reviews you’re likely to come across, you’ll find mention after mention of happy players, lively chat rooms, fun games, huge jackpots and hundreds if not thousands of daily winners.

Online bingo is a fun and fast way to make some extra cash, so why not give it a bash? You might find that you win enough to get your garden in tip-top shape, and maybe even throw in a gazebo or two!

Having an allotment is all about glut and famine. Some times of the year you are inundated with fruit and veg and at others you scarcely have two carrots to rub together.

In this article we will give you some tips on how you can make your fruit and vegetables last throughout the year.

Storing carrots

In the past carrots used to be stored in a clamp. This was a way of storing them outside when we didn’t have the fridges and freezers we have today. If you want to give it a try the carrots should be lifted and left to dry in the sun to kill the root hairs and let the damp soil dry out. The foliage should then be trimmed away. The carrots can then be laid in a shallow hole on a bed of sharp sand with their necks facing outwards. The carrots should be stacked until they make a pyramid. The carrots can then be insulated with a layer of straw and covered with plastic sheeting.

Storing strawberries

If you have any strawberries left from your glut a great way to get the most from them for the rest of the year is to make strawberry jam. All you need to make a batch of tasty jam is a few cups of sugar, lemon zest and juice and your left over strawberries. Heat the sugar and the lemon juice and zest. When the sugar and lemon zest and juice is dissolved you can add the strawberries and boil the mixture slowly. When the juice gels on the back of a plate it’s ready. Make sure you put the liquid in sterilized jars and it will keep for months.

If you have a glut of fruit and veg from your allotment, you could try to pass it on to some of your no-so-greenfingered neighbours. If you post business cards though all your neighbouring allotment holder’s sheds, it can be a great way to share your glut and if you are lucky share some of their glut too.

It becomes impossible to keep some of the more delicate herbs going in the garden through winter - but there IS a way to have access to fresh home-grown herbs throughout the winter. By investing in a special low-wattage CFL (Compact Fluorescent) light bulb you can keep the plants INDOORS and still provide them with all the light they need.

Place the herbs near a window to take full advantage of the natural light and set the CFL bulb on a timer to come on for a couple of hours a night after it goes dark.

You’ll be able to enjoy fresh home-grown herbs all winter using this method and the lights cost very little to run.

A hosepipe ban is now in force in the North West and that could spell disaster for gardening enthusiasts. We’ve had some very dry weather of late so gardens have required a lot of attention, but from now on gardeners will have to be a little more resourceful when watering their gardens.

It’s always a good idea to have a couple of water butts to collect rainwater with which to water your garden. You can also collect bath and shower water for use in your borders and pots as soap rarely has any negative effect on your plants and flowers.

Window boxes and hanging baskets are a great way of giving your house a little extra visual appeal. If you have ever witnessed a little village life on the continent you’ll be aware of the incredible impact that colourful flowers and plants can have on the front and back of houses.

For full effect, select a few green creeping plants that will hang downwards beneath the basket and set these off with some thick, squat and colourful flowers. This will give maximum coverage on top and below the basket or window box.

Summer is the season when your window boxes and hanging baskets will flower at their best, so get down to the garden centre asap.

If you’re living in a house or flat with a small paved garden, you can still benefit from some effective gardening. The best way of decorating a small paved area is probably to place a bit of garden furniture in the centre and then invest in a number of plant pots of different sizes.

Place your pots around the edges of the patio and fill them with colourful plants and flowers. A couple of climbing plants on your fences is a good idea too. This will give the effect of foliage and bright flowering even though you have no borders or lawn.

You can also change the plants in your pots easily every season over the course of an hour or two.

If you want to create an oasis of calm in your garden a great way to do this is to have distinct areas in the garden that have different themes. It can be difficult to relax and find a spot to hide away if you are always in view.

You don’t have to have a large garden to do this. Some well placed planting and the addition of a garden bench at the end of the garden can create the space you need to sit and read your book on a warm summer’s day.

Another way to do this is to separate the a garden into two using fencing or walling between the different sections. You could have a heavily planted section in one half of the garden and a lawned, entertaining part of the garden in the other section. You will then have the choice of where to sit depending on your mood.

Water features make excellent additions to a garden design. And with so many different types now available and some as simple as plug-in and play, you can get the relaxing effect that flowing water will bring to your garden really easily.

A water feature might be a small pond that contains a few cold water fish. It could be a fountain that shoots a jet of water into a rock pool, or it could be as simple as a small wildlife pond. The choice is really up to you. And, because of the different types of water feature available you can let your imagination go wild.

If you have a lawn, you need a lawnmower. But there are so many different types available it can be a little difficult to make a definitive decision.

Perhaps the first thing to consider when buying a lawnmower is the size of garden you have. In a small garden a hover mower might suffice. If perhaps you have a very large garden, you might need a ride-on mower.

Secondly, you need to determine how far away from a power source the lawnmower will be used. If you need to cut the lawn some distance from your home, you may need a petrol mower.

If you want to create a striped effect you need to buy a mower with a large ’barrel’ wheel at the back which leaves stripe marks. And, no matter what mower you buy, make sure there is some form of grass collection device so you don’t have to rake the lawn after it has been cut.

If you have a look around on the internet you can usually find great deals on loads of different types of lawnmowers.

It’s never too late to collect your own rainwater and use it on your garden or allotment. Plants prefer rainwater over tap water because of the chemicals added to tap water at the water processing site. And, if you have a water meter you could save yourself hundreds of pounds by using collected rainwater instead of using tap water.

You can buy water butts quite cheaply from DIY stores and tap into the down spout from your gutter. The butt will come with an overflow system and a built in tap so you can use the water whenever you want.

Using collected rainwater also means that water levels in reservoirs across the UK in the summer months will not be depleted, so the chance of a hosepipe ban will be reduced.

So, do your bit for the environment and collect and use rainwater to water your plants.