Garden info - We need some advice please

hannah2008

we are going to redo the front garden as we simply dont have the time to keep it going, cutting the grass is fine, which only takes 20minutes each fortnight or roughly in the summer. its the flowers/weeds that take up most of time gardening

we have grass in the middle, and plants round the grass, colorful plants, which look nice but as i said, its time & hassle. so we're getting rid of them this summer to do something different with it, our ideas are to keep the grass, and put stones on top of the dirt/earth on top of the black material to keep weeds out. that way all we'd really need to do is keep the grass trimmed.. and garden would be neat. I have made a little picture (im not an artist by any means - but you get the idea what im trying to do :-)



Id really apreciate some peoples opinions about this, weither or not this is a good idea, if not, our overall goal is to do something with the dirt round the grass, so it needs no attention during the year... or very little as possible, could anyone give us ideas on what we could do?

elsien

The weed supressing stuff works quite well. You still get some weeds coming through, but they don't seem to root properly and are much easier to pull up - I've put some on my front patch where nothing grows, along with a covering of stones. If you want a bit of colour you could always shove on a couple of pots - I do summer and winter ones and once they're done a bit of food, water and benign neglect and they keep going for months.

aliasojo

We did this, had grass in the centre and stones round the edge laid over weed control fabric. Biggest problem was when we cut the grass, the clippings blew onto the stones (and that was with a flymo that collected the cuttings). It looked messy and weeds soon took root in the stones. It certainly wasn't any better mantainance wise.

We ended up taking up the grass and laying stones all over the garden with pots everywhere. I sometimes miss the grass but the garden is pretty maintainance free now and is still bright and cheery with all the plants and flowers etc.

hannah2008

elsien wrote: »

If you want a bit of colour you could always shove on a couple of pots

I like this idea!! :-)

aliasojo wrote: »

Biggest problem was when we cut the grass, the clippings blew onto the stones (and that was with a flymo that collected the cuttings). It looked messy and weeds soon took root in the stones. It certainly wasn't any better mantainance wise.

This was what we were told from one of our friends - we also have the flymo that picks up but it does miss some parts of cut grass and like you said would blow onto the stones - alittle bit annoying if it were to make roots inside the stones though, which would bring us back to sqaure-one.:mad:

chez22

My front garden is all grass with a square cut out of the middle that I have put shrubs in. The square has log edging (below level of lawnmower) and it has a membrane covered with chipped bark. Shrubs don't need any maintenance and the grass takes about 10 minutes to cut.

You could put turf down over where your flowerbeds are and do something similar.

Inforapennyinforapound

Had a similar issue,but our "lawn" was awful.

So to kill two birds with one stone we had it removed and had block paving put down with a neat border with a few shrubs overlaid with bark.Now we park the cars on the block paving where the lawn used to be.

It wasnt cheap to do but it looks superb to how it used to look.

aliasojo

andrew-b wrote: »

The other problem we had is cats thinking it's a litter tray...really gross trying to get rid of it and i usually end up throwing the stones away with it.

Ironically, the cats round my way never mess on the stones....instead they use my long rectangular wooden planter. :rolleyes:

hannah2008

Inforapennyinforapound wrote: »

we had it removed and had block paving put down with a neat border with a few shrubs overlaid with bark.Now we park the cars on the block paving where the lawn used to be.

Id love too, but we just simply dont have the money to do that, otherwise that probably wouldave been done by now :-)

How realistic is this... throwing down this black material stuff all over the grass/dirt, buying 2 tons of nice stones and just simply even it all out? Im not a garden person to be honest, and when it comes to gardening I try find the easiest way possible(even if it means cheating). Is this realistic or would I just encounter problems in the future? If its all level... who cares how level it is UNDER the stones? Does that make sense?

Or should I just stop being lazy and dig out the turf, and then flaten it all, THEN put down this weed material, then stones?

Im probably going to make most of you pro gardeners disgusted by what I said :-) sorry x

Atelier

People have already suggested the weed suppressant which does work well to cover large areas but I have always found that smaller patches tend to end up with the corners of the matting coming to the surface.

I would look at choosing some low maintenance ground cover plants that will spread and fill in the gaps in the border so that the weeds don't get a look in.

I'm not a plant person but can suggest things like lavender, perennial geraniums, rosemary if you want something taller, bleeding hearts, Heuchera, Campanula

When mowing just cut to the edge of the lawn and don't worry if you catch a few leaves. There will be plenty more of the plant left so it will be happy

Nile

Hello hannah2008

I'll move your thread to the 'Greenfingered' board.

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

Regards

Nile

hannah2008

Im not 100% sure weither we'd like to have ALL grass, as it might look alittle plain, the stones thing is slightly disapearing from our minds as we just think we might be back to sqaure one if weeds start growing within the stones, therfore we havnt solved the problem at all! allthough grass would look lovely surrounded by stones. Ahhhh.... lol :-)

Thanks for moving this Nile :-)