help!!!!!

Not sure whether I'm in the right place here, but I'll give it a go.

I'm a single fella who has let his garden get into a pretty bad way. A combination of working away from home, working long hours when at home and looking after my son has meant a couple of years of neglect.

The back garden consists of a poorly designed and constructed patio on split levels, a lawn and a border of flowers and shrubs.

What I'm looking for is something more manageable. Less lawn, shrubs that look after themselves, preferably in pots and a new patio.

In my married life my wife was the gardener. I had no interest, and to be honest, still haven't. But it needs sorting out. Is going the grey way, paving, pebbles etc. the way forward, and where would I find advice on this?

 

No way that can be answered briefly. I would just add that pots are not a good idea as they need daily watering in summer.

 

We sort of had the same problem, wanting to get rid of our lawn. We ended up using the slabs from an old path to lay a new patio in the centre of the garden (sun earlier in the day, our garden faces west and the existing patio did not get sun until after midday even in highest summer), building steps next to that patio using railway sleepers (we had some really long ones that were the base of an old shed) and otherwise levelling out most of a slight slope and then using bark and hardwood chips instead of pebbles or slabs to make the garden less labour-intensive but still with a natural feel to it. Add a band new flowerbed and some veg in pots (these are the bits that need maintenance but that's ok) and we have a nice little gem for which we can't wait for the summer to arrive!

 

Thanks Wishaw, that's what I'm looking for. Mine too is a west facing garden. It has playing fields behind and not a lot to the south so I get the sun most of the day. I have a large cherry blossom at the bottom of the garden that blocks the sunlight when I have time to actually sit outside!

How do you stop weeds coming the the bark and hardwood chips?

 

You can get black woven material from the garden centres specially for this. It's porous so lets water through but excludes light so weeds can't grow. I f you want a shrub or tree just make a hole to plant through.

 

If you do as Liz says - make sure you weed throughly first!! Dig deep and get the roots right out, otherwise they will keep going!

 

The grass/weeds/shrub remnants are about half a metre high at the moment. Is there an easy way of getting rid of all this, chemical wise, or is it just a case of getting stuck in with shears? I was hoping to make a start at the weekend but a combination of rain and asthma put a stop to it.

 

Even if you use chemicals, you are still going to have to get stuck in to remove the dead "remnants"

Wait till things dry out a bit. Cutting wet stuff is a real pain and the rain will dilute any chemicals you use.

 

Take these guys advice with regards to weed suppressing etc and then get a man in! Paying someone for their time to look after your garden is sometimes cost effective if yours is at a premium. 3 Hours every couple of weeks is usually enough to maintain the grass and seasonally snip a few shrubs and trees.