New to gardening with very little idea

What merleworld said. I think garden centres sell some "ready mix" that is a combination of soil and grass seed, otherwise just buy the smallest bag of grass seed, fill the hole until level, scatter some grass seed on it, rake it / run your fingers through it so that its mixed in with the top 1/2" of soil, and water with a can with a rose (otherwise you'll wash the seed away!) every day - to get it to germinate quickly, before the next rains, and in good time before the Summer Heat!

 

Ah thanks for that, I did read that B&Q's topsoil is full of peat - I'll probably go for a small bag of compost instead. Still raining in London - which is great for the fertiliser right?

Really embarrassed to post the pics of my back garden! I hope it's salvageable!

 

Yes. The plants need water to "disolve" the fertilizer so their roots can then take it up (and if it doesn't rain the fertilizer in direct cnotact with the plants is very strong,a dn turns to "burn" them, so fertilizer immediately before a week of on/off rain is perfect

The fertilizer will also make the weeds grow, and weeds that are growing strongly will be more susceptible to treatment by selective weed-killer, so if you need to apply lawn-weedkiller do that in a couple of weeks time and you should get very good results from that too

 

Alright so I'm going to add the compost tomorrow to the holes, will then cut the front garden (it's been almost two weeks since the fertiliser) and then will apply a selective weedkiller (I found a good one online, Verdone's?).

In the meantime I'd be really grateful if you guys could have a look at my back garden and advise me what I should do here. I'm thinking cut, give it three days, apply fertiliser before it rains and then cut a couple of weeks later and again dousing it in selective weedkiller.

As you can see though, this one's got more weeds. I think those are dandelions as well as violets.





You can see the violets running through here:



You'll notice there's a part at the back which is bare. Do you think gras seed will be able to fill that area up? I don't really want to go to the trouble of buying turf just for that section at the back?

I've read that violets are really tough to get rid of?

We also have this plant on the side which I'm sure has died - what do I do with it?!?



Many thanks for any help

 

Samhabib, the blue flowers don't look like violets to me, I think they are forget-me- nots and self seed everywhere.

 

I thought that too.