How much to spend on garden? (How long is a piece of string)

sounds like you have a plan!

i tend to gather up bits of treasure then store them and make something myself - i will start a post

i find its the structure that needs careful thought and budgeting - fences, topsoil paths etc - the 'bones' of the whole garden

good luck with the lawn - had some nice rain last night

Loopy

 

This is a bit more 'long term', but when it comes to your birthday and Christmas, ask for National Garden Vouchers - you can buy them in garden centres and certainly places like Homebase and even Amazon (so people won't necessarily have to go out of their way to get them).

When it comes to planting (although you don't have to spend them on plants), you can 'run riot' in the garden centre - I had a wonderful day yesterday splurging £70 on things I wouldn't otherwise have bought.

 

Thanks for the ideas folks. I'm feeling much more positive about it now. Once my mushroom compost comes (within a couple of weeks), I can get the soil into some sort of useable form.

Seperately, my latest bindweed war is going my way down the bottom end which has until now been off the radar so to speak. Another couple of weeks and I'm sure it will be bindweed free. I'm going to order a green manure crop for that end, perhaps alphalpha, and just let it be for this year. That at least mean it looks ok, and there's plenty of garden left to do something good for this year. Then next year, when I've got the main part done, the bottom end will be nicely improved by the green manure crop, ready for me to do something with it.

I've been told by the missus that I'm making a morning chillout area about halfway down the garden (where the sun shines on the mornings). I'm going to do a little decking area there, and incorporate some steps and a slide for our little son. A play area is going to be built (by me) in the same area.

Near the back of the house (where we get the last of the evening sun) I've already built a raised evening chillout area, and just need to do something with the floor between that and the back door now. Pebbles seems like a likely candidate for that bit, but I'm thinking of sloping it ever so slightly down to the start of the lawn.

I've just remembered we have some nasturtium seedlings in pots. These can go in somewhere that isn't on the short term plan. They'll hide the badness of my unfinished work while at the same time adding organic matter to the soil at that point, which will later become my herb/veg patch.

 

Sounds good Dave, like the idea of chillout areas, mine are just piles of slabs at the moment:DOH:

Alfalfa is good too, as you can eat it