Real beginner

hi homely59
clay soil is odd but with the right plants you will soon have the garden you want.
hebes are good in clay. but go for the smaller leaves ones i find their easier.

Can you improve the soil? Clay is so difficult for gardeners to handle. Dig in LOTS of organic matter, home-made compost and well-rotted horse manure. If you can dig it in the late autumn, and leave it, frost will help to break up the lumps of clay as well. By the way, Roses like clay soils - but you have to feed them!

Hi thanks for the help. I have a climbing rose that is very healthy but it looked beautiful in the garden centre, has small white flowers but they are so fragile and they only last about two weeks of the spring and thats it for the year, so a little disappointed as it grows really quickly so seems to need a lot of work clipping it back all the time. I hate to remove it all together as it is such a lovely healthy plant but don't know what i am doing wrong. Regards Sue.

Climbers don't need clipping back, Sue, they need to have their shoots tied in to supporting wires as horizontally as possible after the main prune in early spring. The new shoots are the flower-bearing ones. Do you know its name? It could be that it is a repeat-flowering rose, and if you are clipping it back, you may be losing the next lot of flowers! Don't remove it, it sounds as if it's a lovely one.