Moving abroad

here is a question for you all to ponder over
are we too tidy in the gardens these days
we clear the leaves away but i remember being told to leave some for the worms and the birds ect but now every where you go everyone is clearing them all away.

 

Well utbg, I am trying an experiment, this year my garden has been ruined by the necessary activities of the builders and also I have a marquee on the lawn just to make it worse.

Everything has gone to pot, so I have just left it!
Looks a right mess, but as you say, should be good for the wildlife. I keep telling myself it's not laziness, it's an experiment! :D :D watch this space!

 

Couldn't agree more, a lot of gardens these days are treated as if they are part of the house and must be kept so neat and tidy its unreal.
Just tidy enough suits me, and there should always be an area to keep all those bits and pieces, old pots etc.

 

This is just the place for me as my neighbours, all four of them (all Portuguese) think I am completely mad because I spend my time weeding!

I am told "nature takes it's course" and they will be gone by the next season. I am horrified and continue to bend over and pluck every week in sight to the amusement of my neighbours!

But .. I'm a Brit and I CANNOT HAVE WEEDS IN MY GARDEN!

Pete, t'other half objects to my "bits and pieces, old pots etc" in the garden, shed, wherever. But does he love the garden .... YES! He is so proud to show it off, but I have no room for my "stuff".

We bought 3 x 50 kilo bags of "substrata" last week to plant up the two concrete pots brought from the UK. It only took two and he asked where we were going to put the other one. I said in the shed (4 x 3 metres) and he said there was no room as his work tools from the UK had to be in there (ha, ha, ha ... work tools ... what work?)

My gardening is onging ...

 

My garden like my house will never be tidy and immaculate. Kinda comfortable - both me and the wild life (outside that is) like it that way. Leaves cover the border, weeds are removed if they are too intrusive, plants are tidied only when they offend my eye - and closely planted to deal with my plantaholic nature.

 

Yes we are too tidy and these horible noisy suck/blower things for leaves are a menace. Organic gardeners know that you have to leave leaf litter, dead wood and decaying vegetation for the mini-beasts. Also most slugs and snails prefer to eat decaying plant matter. If you tidy it all away they will be forced to eat your seedlings.

I weed only with a hoe and ALWAYS leave the cut weeds on the soil. I never gather them up. The worms soon pull them down where they eat them and excrete them and so enrich the soil

 

My house is clean and tidy ..the garden is definately not tidy.. :D At the moment it looks like a jungle and i havnt pulled a weed for months.. :eek: I have leaves everywhere and as things are dieing down i have left them .. :D

 

I keep my garden in a perpetual state of organised chaos,and at this time of the year it is just right :D

 

As our garden is rather bigger than most, we never actually manage to get round everywhere to tidy it up. The blower complained of, I use (when the dratted thing works) to blow the leaves off the paths where they make walking dangerous, and onto the borders to act as a mulch. You try doing that to nearly half a km of paths with a rake! Weeds we pull out as far as possible, but only becaue they choke out the plants I want to grow. Nettles are a different matter. Sadly both of us have been stung so often we are now super sensitive to them and a nettle sting is no longer a minor itch and a few hives. Nettles are removed as soon as we see them for our safety. But yes I would agree we probably do tidy more than is strictly good for wild life. However, these days people are far less likely to spray everywhere with noxious substances as they were once upon a time.

 

Well said Palustris. Blowers are noisy its true, but for us commercial gardeners they are IMO unquestionably the biggest labour saver since the lawn mower. For those of us who like or need to have things looking tidy it is not difficult to blow the leaves off paths and it won't hurt wildlife. Likewise blowing a covering of leaves off a lawn means you stand a chance of having a lawn next year rather than a mudheap.

I personally prefer to do this and then leave the leaves in the borders where they can mulch down. Over barkchip they look attractive, and if required you just blow a foot wide strip of clear soil/bark at the borders edge to make the garden look sharp.

Yes we are too tidy, and people like things to be too sanitised; the alternative doesn't have to be a muck and magic shambles though.

 

well this post fairly got everyone talking cheers for the replies people some very interesting answers aswell.

 

My aim has to be to provide a garden which both humans and animals can enjoy. There is a log pile under the aucuba, and under the shrubbery ivy grows as ground cover. Plants die down and are not cleared up until after winter.

Yes, I cut the grass, but that's all part of the human domain.

I fall into the middle ground. No one could say my garden is tidy, nor is it overgrown, just somewhere in between.

 

Sounds lovely, Rich.

I'll say further than I did above. One, I don't have and can't have a lawn because of "have to water all the time" reasons. So, I have this "space" which is marginal earth on top of rock which gets taken over by weeds and wildflowers in summer (which grow to near on two metres tall, no joke) which we strim down to "look like lawn".

I have a border, a rockery which I built on top of the rubble left from the renovation to the house and a sand garden which is a rock bed where we had to pick-axe the rock away dig holes to plant the shrubs in it and then let them take their course finding their own way to earth and water way down below.

The rest is in concrete pots!

 

I planned to leave the leaves ( ) this year, and I will, except for the ones from next doors tree that have fallen exclusively on the gravel at the top of the garden! No gravel to be seen atm - they will have to be cleared up :rolleyes: Have cut very little back - am enjoying seeing the birds in the Spirea - their little heads poking out and disappearing again Lovely :D :D