Gardening: How to brighten up your life on a budget

Lisa Hudson is an expert grower for the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in Salford, and she agrees you can save a fortune by using any container to grow things in.

“Start small,” she says. “Start on your windowsill if you’ve got one, use whatever containers you’ve got to hand.”

But she warns people should “make sure they’ve got some drainage in them, because plants do not like to sit in a puddle of water”.

One of the main parts of Lisa’s job is what is known as propagating, or making more plants.

And she loves the fact that people can do this for free.

At the basic level, she says, you can collect seeds from sunflowers, nasturtiums, or marigolds to plant next year.

She says lots of plants can be divided.

“Anything that’s got a decent amount of root you can quite often split.

“Mint works really well, but a lot of ornamental plants where they’ve just got a single woody stem – you’re going to kill it.”

But if you cannot divide it “you can probably take a cutting of it”, Lisa says.

“So that’s usually a small section of stem then you stick in a pot and get to grow roots.”

And once you have got your extra plants, you can use them in your own space, or swap them for free.