Hello Everyone - the start of a big journey! may need help

Hello Everyone,

My name is Lucy. My family and I have just, this week taken on a very large project. We are restoring an old cottage with overgrown orchard and meadow that are 2.5 acres. Taking in to account that ordinarily I can't keep a house plant it really is a challenge to say the least. We are so excited and nervous about it. Really I just wanted to introduce myself as I am probably going to be on here ALOT! I think I really need a mentor!!

To add to the work I have been advised by the previous owners that the orchard in particular is home to such a vast array of rare plants and wildlife and has never been touched by modern chemicals. I am not going to be the first one to suddenly round up the lot just for an easy life so the millions of nettles that are there at the moment will be pulled etc.

I am a photographer and am keeping a thorough record of all the work being done and changes etc. The space will eventually be a natural 'studio' for family photography.

I suppose I do have one first question if anyone would like to help. It's about the nettles really, there are vast quantities of them, now I don't mind some as I am interested in making nettle tea and I understand they are good for wildlife, in particular butterflies but at present there are just millions of them. Forgetting chemical control would you say that strimming and burning will be the best step forward.

Kind regards,

Lucy

 

House plants are for Mother's-in-law IME. I give my Orchids to my MiL after flowering, and get them back 11 months later when they are ready to flower again! otherwise they, along with other house plants here, would be in a sorry state at best, dead at worst :(

I think the difficult part of photographing a garden project is choosing an angle to photograph from that is the one, in years to come, that you retrospectively want to have time-lapse photos from! I try to solve that by quantity of photos I photograph everything that is in flower on a fortnightly wander round the garden to form a record, over the years, of the earliest & latest dates for things, and also as a reminder of what might be moved nearer / beside something else that looks good at the same time.

I would take a nettle-crop, like hay, and put them on the compost heap. They are great at accelerating the composting process. I have heard it said that Nettles are a sign of good soil (I presume they don't grow in miserable soil), so maybe that is a good sign? A couple of goes with Roundup will do for them, if you get to the point where you feel the need (I see myself as mostly organic, no chemicals go onto crops that we eat, but I'm not adverse to exterminating things before flower/vegetable beds are created as it saves a huge amount of time initially)

People say to change nothing in a new garden for 12 months, so you see what is there, and how it lends itself to the seasons. That apart, my advice would be to concentrate on the things that will take a while to establish - Trees, Hedges and Shrubs (probably in that order); you may also want to start raising things from seed / cuttings to save money? they will then be ready for planting in year 2 or 3 when your ideas have crystallised. I've taken over 1,000 Box cuttings this Autumn to hopefully make a Parterre garden - assuming they "take"! - and we have grown lots from seed and bits stolen or given from other gardens. If your budget means you need to go that route then you might want to have a greenhouse (eBay or Freecycle locally, or similar) on your wants-list?

You might want to start a thread here to record your progress (or start a blog perhaps? but a thread here can graduate to a blog - mine did :thumb. Its very therapeutic, and helps to feel good about the progress that has been made even if, like my garden, it looks like a building site throughout its formative years.

Have fun and enjoy your project :gnthb:

 

P.S. You might want to put an indication of your location in your "User CP" - it helps with advice folk give

 

Hi Kristen,

Thanks so much for your reply. Your blog is amazing, I will have a proper read through in a minute. I should have said actually that the orchard and meadow are agricultural land so I am very aware there is little I can do with it, it's just a case of keeping it accessible for my children to play in and looking nice. I have been advised that whilst I can't plant anything in terms of it being like a garden but I can sow herbs and wild flowers. At present there are some lovely old apple and plum trees, some dead trees and lots and lots of fallen branches and twigs.

The meadow, it seems, is a haven for wild flowers and insects in the summer months and I am thinking of talking to the local farmer about letting sheep graze in the autumn and winter.

As for the garden, well I think the building work will make it non-usable for a year or so but we are planning to rescue roses and other plants currently around the outside of the house which would inevitable perish if left there.

Slow and steady wins the race - that's my thoughts with the outside space anyway. Loving the learning curve so far.

Lucy

 

Hello there and Welcome,

 

Hi Lucy and welcome to Gardeners Corner. Your plot sounds fantastic, if a lot of hard work. Stick around and feel free to ask for assistance of advice - there is a wealth of knowledge here in the members

Take it easy, a section at a time and don't despair if it becomes too much. And remember that gardening is supposed to be fun and rewarding (although, yes, hard work too!).

Nettles are brilliant for attracting butterflies, so use that excuse if you like

 

Hi Lucy it sounds as though you have got a large project on your hands, one thing I would say about the nettles is you will probably have a lot of old carpet or matting from the cottage and laying that over the nettles during the winter will kill an awful lot. It will be a slow project but in the end worthwhile, good luck Billo

 

I suggest thinking twice about using old carpet. Once it starts to rot down its a nightmare to remove, and probably contains toxins - so may not be a good idea if you might grow veg there in the future.

Having said that I do use carpet for mulch, but only along new hedges which are going to be there a long time, and not change / become edible crops

Cardboard lasts a suprisingly long time as a mulch - certainly a whole season, and with luck two seasons.

 

Thanks everyone for the advice. I have delegated this particular nettle removal job to my dad, for now at least!!

 

If you get sheep in, you can say goodbye to your wild flowers. The only vegetation that survive sheep is grass, gorse and briars.

If you don't want to use Round-up (or equivalent) the only way to get rid of nettles is to constantly dig up the yellow roots but that's an absolutely herculean task.

Stick up a few pics. We love pics!

 

Well, I started pulling the nettles today. I was really surprised, they came up so easily - roots and all and what surprised me even more is how mcuh I loved doing this! - very therapeutic.

I can't do anything in the actual garden for over a year so pulling nettles and raking the millions of twigs under the trees will be just fine for now:lollol:

If you would like to see some photos there are some on my blog

http://lucywoodrowphotography.blogspot.com/

No, this isn't dedicated to the garden but to my business but you get the picture, the nettles aren't very clear in there but I am going to take some more photos that really show how many there are and then one day when it's a beautiful bare-foot walkable spot (!) then I can look back at how it was.

 

Welcome to GC :gnthb:

 

Hi, and welcome to GC.
Enjoy your stay
Robert of Yorkshire

 

Hi Lucy & welcome to the forums,

If you need any advice on the actual building, give me a shout, my trade is in historic building conservation & repair.

Just keep pulling the nettle roots out, you'll get on top of them eventually. Trouble is, there will be lots of seeds there as well.

Some fantastic shots on your blog, but when I visited you're main website, it crashed my computer.

The message was something like "there is an adobe component on the site that will make your computer unresponsive" Then everything faded to grey & my key board locked.You might want to talk to your IT dept about that. Could lose you customers & we dont want that.