One of the best ways to get outside at this time of the year is to start your own vegetable garden. It doesn’t have to take a lot of space in your yard but it will take some time and effort to look after it.

I’ve always loved farmers’ markets and the local food available at them so I thought I’d make a film on local eating (you can check it out here). My family has tried before to grow a garden in our yard without much success – mostly because our local wildlife likes our garden as much as we do. But after a lot of care and attention and a really good fence we are now enjoying daily salads and lots of great herbs and even some flowers that add colour to the whole space.

Gardens in general are a great way to bring your community together or in our case our family together, to eat healthy and to connect with nature. A good way to start is with a small herb garden. As for the smaller critters that also love to munch on greens there are lots of natural ways to keep these tiny eating machines away from your foliage.

If you live in an apartment you can grow something small on your patio or inside on a windowsill and then progress from there depending on your success. And did I mention all of it tastes so much better than what you find in the grocery stores. Now I understand why so many restaurants have rooftop gardens – to get the freshest ingredients as possible for their meals.

So next year, we hope to expand our garden, both in size and in the variety of things we plant. Every yard has its limits in what you can grow but every garden, in whatever space, also has it’s own possibilities. It’s up to you to find out what those possibilities are and start experimenting.