Gardening is good for you. The evidence clearly shows it plays a vital role in your mental well-being as well as keeping you fit. At least that, overwhelmingly is my own experience, as I’ve said here many times.

But gardening carelessly can hurt and very, very occasionally, kill you. So, at the start of an exciting new year, here are some simple, perhaps obvious, ways to make the most of your garden and to keep safe till it’s time to hang up the spade for the year.

As with everything in gardening, you have to decide what’s important to you: do you wear gloves to keep your hands clean and presentable, or are you happy to get dirt under the fingernails and risk agonising cracked thumbs in spring before your hands toughen up?

I’ve run workshops where everyone starts by donning gloves before even touching a trowel. But I hate being encased in gloves: I’d much sooner wield a nail brush and Badgers Balm anti-crack cream.

Tackling beds with nettles and possibly broken glass or rusty nails are a different story and gloves are essential. And with pruning roses, I have to slip in and out of my gauntlets, compromising between getting a good grip of an offending stem or having it rip my flesh.

You should definitely wear gloves when working round any poisonous plants, especially if you’ve a skin allergy. For example, brushing against Euphorbia can irritate the skin, and Foxgloves, Daphnes, Lily of the Valley and even Alstroemeria, are slightly toxic.

Ingesting all or part of these plants is very dangerous, so children need to restrict their grazing to ones they know are safe. And however alluring Laburnum bean-like seeds may seem, they are highly toxic.

Nonetheless, tools are the cause of most accidents. After buying a new machine and ploughing through instructions in 20 languages, you’d be forgiven for reckoning you’d never dare to use it.

But even if manufacturers seem overly cautious, the basic message is right: use goggles, gloves, helmet or whatever’s recommended. Strimmers, shredders and especially hedge trimmers are perfectly safe when treated with respect. And modern battery-run equipment is much safer than trailing lines of cord.

Don’t drop your guard with hand tools. The first lesson I learned when running a garden for the public was that tidiness is all. Never leave a bucket of weeds, tool bag or sprawling spade on a path. And rakes or hosepipes straddling the path are outlawed. These rules should apply in any garden.

And be realistic about yourself. After sitting in front of a screen all day, don’t rush into the garden, lift slabs, turn 3 compost heaps or dig over a bed. Your back will punish you, whatever your age.

Be like an athlete: warm up first and don’t go all out straight away. Do a bit of pottering and prep before any strenuous work, as I know from bitter experience. After several years of teaching, my young fit body couldn’t handle the constant hard graft on our smallholding. The price tag was a sair back and tennis elbow.

I hope with age, I’m a little more realistic. Sadly, you can’t work as hard for so long. When you need one or two more breaks, just relax and enjoy the surroundings. Do less, but give up at your peril. You’ll shrink along with your horizons.

I’m frankly saddened when people tell me they’re ‘being sensible’ by replacing the lawn with easy-maintenance slabs. When my wife Jane was in terrible pain before a hip replacement, she found walking behind the mower a doddle. Do what you can, pace yourself and enjoy.

Plant of the week

Erysimum ‘Red Jep.’ This Wallflower’s neon pink and purple, scented flowers bring contrast to the pastel shades of spring. This short-lived perennial needs full sun and well drained soil.