Gardening Is Good Medicine

If you are doing any container gardening for patio or hanging baskets or window boxes, you will need some potting soil. I use the Miracle Gro Potting Soil (shown in this picture) because then I don't have to buy extra fertilizer. I add that to the containers to fill in around the soil that the plants actually come in with the root system already well developed. These are mostly for flowers and decorative use. For vegetables I try to go as natural and organic as possible. You might want a pair of gardening gloves to protect your hands. I hardly use mine, I can work better without them and I don't mind getting my hands dirty. Another inexpensive 'necessity' is a rubber kneeling pad, you can usually pick one up for around a dollar or so and any discount store, gardening centers probably have them but they might cost a little more. I like to have some stones and river rocks available for decorating and there are so many other neat decorations available at all price levels. There are many found natural objects you can use to decorate like driftwood, wood bark, larger rocks, etc. I did buy the bricks for the perimeter of my space, but sometimes you can get lucky and find some that someone is getting rid of.
Last but not least, you will need a few basic tools. A three hand cultivating set is not too expensive and for bigger in the ground gardening a spade shovel and a 4 tined fork are the basics. For very large plots you may want to rototill or pay someone to do it if you don't have a tiller.
Oh and don't forget a pair of pruning shears, these are good for trimming back a lot of plants and shrubs, they even have smaller ones for cutting back more delicate flowering plants.
If you are new to gardening, I would suggest starting small and working your way up. You may not want to invest a lot of money in case you find out gardening is not your cup of tea. Also in these tough economic times, you may just have to be a bit more frugal.

I've had big, medium and small vegetable gardens over the years. In the past few years I haven't had the time to devote to a bigger garden so the next best thing is a small container garden with some annuals and perennials. Sometimes I even plant a few tomato or pepper plants. It is just enough to keep me happy for the time being. This is just after I finished planting and potting. It looks better when everything gets bigger. But this is good to show the size and spacing of pots and bricks, etc. I did have two tomato plants in this garden, right underneath the yellow flowers. I usually just put one in a container because they get pretty big. I will be posting more pics soon from my 2010 garden.
I usually go with different color schemes, depending on how I feel at the time. I do have some basics that I like and always use. I love decorative sweet potato vines, they come in greens and reddish purplish leaves and grow into really nice full vines and hang really nice. (Shown on top of the two orange cement blocks, above the yellow Lantana). I always buy some purple fountain grass (on right next to the sweet potato plant) because I love that too. I usually buy a white or purple hanging Bacopia (on right next to purple fountain grass) which is ever blooming, old blooms die off and new ones keep coming. You have to keep them well watered. After that I experiment with different annuals and some perennials which in the climate I live in (Northern Ohio) act more like annuals. This year I also had some white Gerbera Daisies and some deep pink petunias.

There is nothing like homegrown tomatoes. I only had three plants this year and for some reason, there wasn't a lot of tomatoes, but what I did have were delicious. Here is a pic of my first almost ripe tomato!