new home & new to gardening

Firstly, Hi Everyone!
also, I am not sure if this is the right section to post this?

My Family and I have recently moved to a new house in the Welsh valleys, with very large gardens front and back! We are used to city living with little to no garden space and because of this we have pretty much zero gardening knowledge.

The front garden in our property is what would typically be a rear garden
as in, our rear garden is the driveway & garage/shed areas and the front the secluded/private area. ( no roads/pavements for 100s of meters )

anyway, The front garden was & still is a mess..it's overgrown, full of weeds and we do not know where to begin.

our goal is to have a substantial lawn area with a paved patio area for relaxing in summer months on a dining set, However plans are not finalised and we would be very grateful of any advice or inspiration

the garden size is approx 10 meters x 8 meters

what would be the best course of action to tackle this garden and prepare it tobe worked on?

I have attachedsome photos to allow better understanding/advice

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner

 

to Gardeners Corner Batman - Looks as if you have a pretty big project there - look forward to seeing future pics of development on it. Good luck!

 

Holy big garden Batman! Sorry, couldn't help myself there Welcome to GC!

 

Hallo Batman,
- you've got your work cut out there. Take it steady - a bit at a time. Plenty of help advice and encouragement on here. What a haven for wildlife it must be in there!
Has it been untouched for a long time?

Jenny namaste

 

Welcome to GC, Batman

My first thoughts are: forget flowers/veg *this* year

If lawns, borders, beds are you main aim, you need to kill everything that is currently there.

Do you have a plan/rough sketch of what you would like and where?
Have you tested your soil to understand if it is alkaline/acid/neutral?
If not, now it a good time to do so.
By that same token, what aspect does your garden face: north, south, east, west, somewhere inbetween?
That is also very useful to know - particularly through the winter days when you will be wanting to understand which areas get the sun/shade for much of the day.

When I moved into my current home (3 yrs ago) I knew just enough to understand that midsummer sun doesn't mean all day sun in all aspects. My own garden is NNE facing, so the areas that are now enjoying a bit of sun in the morning and at dusk, get no sun at all during the darker months. Yet, other areas get full pelt sunlight during the high season.

One of my first tasks was to weed and feed the worst area (and it was so overgrown we had no idea how much space/land we would reveal! And it was substantial (compared to what we were used to!).

But, I stress once again: you do need to have a clear idea of what you would like in your garden and what you are dealing with (soil structure, prevailing wind, waterlogging (?) areas, dry areas.

Looking forward to reading your posts

 

Hello and welcome Batman.

Holy mackerel, there's some work to be done there. Is that your bit on top of the wall too, or is that the neighbours?

 

shoot! I relied on my email to inform me of replies so have been unaware of the responses!
sorry folks!

Thank you all for the warm welcome, I had to prise myself from the computer yesterday as I was so engrossed with the forum!

Ill quote each post with a question and reply after each, probably easier that way.. lets go.

Brilliant! We do have a lot of Robins in our gardens to be honest! even ducks from time to time , we have a large lake and nature trail at the end of the rear garden, which is outstanding, my Daughters love it! It is council owned, but the ducks end up in my garden ha-ha.

I have been dreading it, but I read a post on here yesterday that said about switches going off, and enjoying/having great interest in hobbies you never imagined enjoying.
and I 100% relate to that post, I remember as a child how fun digging & plating and gardens were at my Grandmothers, and I would love my children to be able to enjoy the gardens.
The garden was in this state when we bought the house, but had very large conifers
which we paid to have removed, other than that, totally untouched.

Hi M, I will answer this as best I can, and will attach a very basic MS paint to show what my plan is.

I have not yet tested the soil, how would I go about that?
The garden faces SW
as for killing everything, I'm not too bothered about glyphosate or weed killers as it needs to go. I have used a large tub of weedol, to see how we go, would this affect any results of testing the soil?

also whilst I'm on the topic of wiping everything out, including the ivy how do I kill this all off? from what I can tell. with my very minute knowledge, we have mainly couch grass, fern, brambles, nettles & ivy taking over.

we actually dont know if it is ours!
according to our deeds, yes. The highlighted area includes that land but according the the neighbours its not, when we viewed the house, no wall. when we moved in, there was a wall.

we have no idea how to find this out!
if it is ours, its huge up there, about 40 meters long and 10 wide!!!

that would leave me with 3 huge areas of land!

rear garden is 10 m x 15 m
front is 10 x 10 ( including pathway )
side garden 2 x 8

and with that other area of around 40 x 10 that is insane at a combined area of around
650 square meters , wouldn't know what to do with it all!

do you know how we could find that info out?

hope this all helps for now. ill keep checking back, as I cant rely on my email evidently haha.





excuse the paint doc lol.
but that is the absolute bare basic idea, would love it if any of you guys could mess around with it and some designs or tips & ideas.

 

I would be asking the neighbours to show you their deeds demonstrating that they have a claim to the land. If they can do this, maybe you should get legal advice? If they can't and you can show that it's yours, then I would be putting up a fence and using it. If they have a problem with that, its not your fault. Don't be bullied!

It is possible to discuss amicably with a reasonable neighbour. I once had discussions regarding a small piece of land on my front garden that was on my deeds. The neighbour had assumed it was theirs because of the layout of the front gardens and stopped me when I went onto it to pull up some weeds. I told them I thought it was on my deeds and asked them to come in and wait while I produced the document. They could see for themselves that I was not being 'funny'
and went home to verify that their deeds did not include the land. All was OK after that.

If your plan does not show the boundary clearly then have a look at
https://www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry






Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

thanks wandering, I will try doing that.
as far as we can remember we never signed the land over with the solicitors so surely its ours?

we bought the property off of them actually, they owned this house and originally rented it out, and theirs which is the pink house you can see in the pics I posted above.

with that in mind is it even likely that given that our deeds show the land is highlighted with the rest of the house and garden, that they would own the land?

 

Well if your plan clearly shows it, I would have thought there's no dispute. Maybe you only need to point this out.

Legal advice costs money, but if your claim is straightforward, you might only need a solicitors letter to put your neighbour straight if they insist its theirs without proof, and then it's on the record.

I'm sure the website will be of more use than me, though. I'm strictly an amateur in these matters! Just don't like to see someone ripped off.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

There's a setting in profiles about how you want notification (and you can elect that, by exception, on each thread I think)

Broad brush: Do you have gardens near you with Rhododendrons, Azaleas and Camillias? if so then your soil will be Acid. If not most probably Alkaline, could be neutral.

Get a testing kit from garden centre. One with little testubes and chemicals you add and then a colour chart you compare against. Don't be tempted by a pH meter - cheap ones sold in the Sheds inaccurate and thus completely useless.

No, Weedol inactivated on contact with the soil. If it is "Weedol 2" it won't have been very effective, if "Weedol Deep Root" then its Glyphosate based and much better.

My suggestion:

Take the summer to kill the grass. Glyphosate weedkillers take 2 weeks to have any effect, only then do you see what you missed, and judge what is growing back, so then apply again to the bits that are still green. That's a month elapsed. Glyphosate works best when weeds are actively growing - so don't cut everything down and THEN apply it.

Lawn grown from seed (cheaper than turf, more environmentally friendly and lots of choice as to suitable seed mix from Rugby-Pitch toughness to Bowling-green quality, and also for Shade etc.) is best done in the Autumn, so if you are happy that the garden looks like an Agent Orange experiment! for this Summer that would work well, timewise.

You need to prepare the soil the same whether Turf or Seed - it needs proper cultivation, so you could hire a cultivator and get it broken up (after the one-month elapsed to kill the weeds). You need to use the right kit, basic rotavators won't "dig" into virgin ground at all well, and it would be like having a wrestling match with a Gorilla! (I'll skate over the details, you can ask further questions once you have decided what you want to do).

Other alternative is to hire a mini-tractor with a rear mounted rotavator (driven off the PTO). That will have much more Umph to dig into the soil. I use one of those after I dig stuff with a JCB.

What about flower beds? It would make sense to dig them out at the same time. You could "dig" the whole lot with a JCB-type mini digger - that's what I do for my garden, but its ... ermmm ... rather large My annual boy's-toys hire of the JCB is the highpoint of the year for me

Pull it up I reckon. Not sure what will kill it easily - probably worth trying a herbicide called "SBK" - its a brushwood killer.

Nettles are good. They only grow in rich soil

Drainage OK? Running land drains in is a whole pile easier when you have the whole site "under construction". Cheap-enough and easy to do.

 

I have just bought the plans online of my property and another titled LAND EAST OF NANT Y GWYNODD ROAD.

the first one is the 'land east...' which strangely shows my property included in that!?
the second is my plan, which shows the land is not included. my deeds show as the 1st does but with no green highlight, just the red.. so what on earth is or isn't mine as I am now even more confused

 

You post crossed with mine (just in case, as a newbie, you missed it )