Want to stretch your legs but don't fancy the route along the main road past the roundabout with the great view of teenagers carousing on the corner? Is your significant other spending the weekend going for a new record in couch-potato-living? At times like this the little bit of earth adjoining your house can be a godsend. Even if you live in the suburbs of a sprawling city, your garden can be an oasis to escape to for a bit of exercise and a breath of fresh air (or at least air not filled with the sounds of boozy football spectators chanting anthems).

Whether you've been inspired by one of the ubiquitous gardening programmes on TV or just want to give your backyard a bit of colour with terracotta pots, gardening can be both rewarding and therapeutic. If the last time you planted anything was a box of cress in primary school (in my case I over-watered my first cactus so much the roots turned to slime) there are plenty of books and websites around to guide you in the first steps to creating and nurturing a garden. You may fantasise about a fabulous water feature tumbling over a tiered rockery alongside a pergola festooned with many-coloured roses... but more often than not, unless you hold a diploma in landscape gardening, less is usually more.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society, March is the ideal time to start preparing your garden for planting now that winter (should be) behind us. Prepare the soil in your borders and vegetable patches by turning it over with a garden fork (digging is great exercise); sow vegetable crops including potatoes, beans, beetroot, radish, marrows and courgettes; if you have a greenhouse, plant tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines and peppers - they will all welcome the early spring sunlight. The blossoms of early flowering fruits like peaches and apricots and newly-planted bulbs need to be sheltered from ground frost. Meanwhile you can give your garden a good spring clean: do some weeding; remove debris like dead leaves from ponds and borders; prune large trailing plants and cut away broken shoots; pack exposed roots back into the ground; put down compost as well as slug traps to protect new seeds and shoots. March is also the time to plant flowers like carnations, chrysanthemums, carnations, pansies and roses: it won't be long before your garden is in full bloom and winter – and being cramped indoors – will just be a distant memory.