Making a garden can be very expensive. People often embark on a makeover after moving house, when money is tight, or they splurge on landscaping and then realise they don’t have enough left over for plants, but it is surprising how frugal you can be if you plan ahead and are prepared to spend time raising your own plants. The easy answer is to sow a wildflower mix evenly across the entire bed. A more challenging solution is to sow a composition that produces flowers in the first year but includes a balance of perennial and annual plants so that your garden will become less labour intensive every year.