Like gardens but really, really hate gardening!

snowleopard61

Hope this is a reasonable place to post this thread - I know there's a 'greenfingered' board, but it seemed pointless to post it there, where everyone who saw it was likely to be a gardening enthusiast!

I have heard gardening referred to as 'outdoor housework', and that's pretty much how I regard it - except that I actually rather like indoor housework. My problem with gardening is that

(a) it involves getting hot or cold, wet or sweaty and dirty;
(b) it has to be done in public and I'm very private by nature. And for the same reason, I never spend any time in my garden except to hang out washing, and wouldn't want to however nice it looked - and it's not really visible from most of my windows either;
(c) I find it somehow baffling - although quite good at recognising plants, from having had a green-fingered father, I have no idea what to do with them, apart from cutting hedges and grass. I can look at a gardening book or hear Gardeners' Question Time and simply find it mysterious how anyone can understand it at all. Unlike a room, where I can have an image in my mind and come to an approximation of it within my budget, I have no idea what to do with a garden at all, so it looks pretty much as it did when I bought it 11 years ago ... only worse;
(d) gardens just won't stay done - they keep on growing and if you neglect them completely people will think you're a slob;
(e) I'm petrified of rats and am always afraid I'll see one or :eek: even have one run across my foot, especially when I have to go near the shed - which is now extremely tatty as a result of weather damage and my fear of going near it!

My garden is quite small, and the only reason I ever had one was so that my (now young adult) children would have somewhere to play when they were younger. Given complete freedom of choice I'd like to live somewhere where there was plenty of outdoor space but no garden (e.g. the sort of houses you see in the Scottish Highlands) - a flat would suit me fine except for the proximity to neighbours. I'm not in a position to move house because I would ultimately like to move away from the area completely - perhaps back to the North - but this won't be possible for perhaps 10-15 years, and there's no point going to the expense of moving locally.

I really don't like gardens paved over with all greenery gone, but hate doing anything at all to maintain them (even container gardening or watering). This is probably a long shot, but has anyone else experienced similar feelings on the subject and come up with any bright ideas? - other than just gritting your teeth and getting on with it?

TIA

Lazy_Liz

This is a hard one, I suggest you get soemone to take away the tatty shed, put up a six foot fence all round with good quality pressure treated timber (less maintance) remove all plants and lay turf all over. Then just grit your teeth to mow it.
In the mean time take a stick if you approach the shed, bang the shed sided befor entering, I guarantee any rats willhave run away.

snowleopard61

I think you may be right that this is the only way I can actually deal with the problem (as opposed to timidly trying to tidy it up a little bit when I really have to)... whether I can be so brutal as to rip things up is another thing.

Am not sure where I would put the mower if I didn't have any shed at all, but perhaps I could just cover it up.

Thank you for the tip re the rats

Lazy_Liz

If you can't stand no plants at all then plant some shrubs through landscape fabric and cover with gravel or woodchips. Get help with chosing suitable shrubs that flower at different times, they require much less work than perenials, bedding plants or pots but you do need to take care you don't end up with monsters that reach 30' high (and some do!!)
I would need to check my gardening books but with careful chosing you can have something flowering all year round and many are evergreen so it won't look so barren in winter.
In fact shrubs and gravel all over can look pretty stylish and you won't need to store a mower. You will be able to peg out on sunny winter days without getting muddy too.

ringothebingo

snowleopard61 wrote: »

I really don't like gardens paved over with all greenery gone, but hate doing anything at all to maintain them (even container gardening or watering). This is probably a long shot, but has anyone else experienced similar feelings on the subject and come up with any bright ideas? - other than just gritting your teeth and getting on with it?

TIA

Yes and the answer was easy for me. We had this stupid situation where whenever it was a nice day (not that often in the UK) it would be "oh, what a nice day, best get the mower out" then we installed artificial grass and now it's "oh what a nice day, best get the wine out". It looks better than real grass and is no hassle. Even the dog loves it. The site I used was direct-artificial-grass

thriftwizard

I have a little garden at the back of my shop, and a reasonably big one at home. Needless to say, the one outside the shop doesn't get a lot of attention as I'm usually busy with other things when I'm up there. It's mostly gravel over landscape fabric (that's how I inherited it, and it's a fire escape for the neighbouring printing press so it needs to stay that way) & doesn't get much sun in winter, so it's filled with some nicely architectural tough plants in big pots, which need virtually no attention, and some big "evergreen" fake plants which need none at all; all of these have been sourced at our local dump for pennies. To brighten it up in summer I stick out some bright geraniums (liberated from skips in autumn & overwintered on windowsills) in old terracotta pots, also from the dump. Geraniums are also very tough & prefer not being watered all the time. I get lots of positive comments like, "What a lovely little garden! I'm so glad someone's looking after it now!" and I think very few of them ever guess that the whole thing, in a space of about 30' x 7', has cost me less than a tenner and takes virtually no work at all.
Heaven only knows why people are always chucking out useful plants & pots - and big, expensive fake plants too, even if they are a bit moth-eaten, but you can't tell that at a distance - but I'm not complaining!

monnagran

Oh Snowleopard, me too, me too, me too.

I do like to see a nice garden and I like to look out on a nice garden. I will even go out and dig around a bit if the sun is out and it's not too hot and the wind isn't blowing and it's not too cold and certainly not wet and visitors are coming at the weekend and there's nothing on the telly and I've run out of displacement activities.............

I pay someone to mow the lawn. Money well spent!

lostinrates

There have been simialr threads on green fingered.

One answer proposed has been garden share schemes, where some one does the work and is allowed a veg patch and you get the joy of looking at it and some of the veg.

snowleopard61

Thank you all so much for your different takes on this - all of which are potentially solutions for me. I rather like Thriftwizard's very creative idea, even though it does involve some gardening - not sure where I could get hold of the fake plants to put in among the real ones, as unfortunately I'm nowhere near the local dump and don't drive, but charity shops are a possibility - or even perhaps special offers in Ikea now and then. Or even pound shops if the really cheapo things were cleverly disguised.

Ringothebingo and Monnagran's answers both gave me a good laugh! The artificial grass is quite tempting ... and I really empathise with the 'displacement activity' thing. I actually find the advent of spring and summer makes me feel stressed as I know things will be starting to grow again and I won't be able to use bad weather as an excuse any more.

The idea Lostinrates mentioned is something that had occurred to me, the only drawback being that, because of my peculiar thing about privacy and preferring to be 'invisible' or at least unnoticeable, having someone else working in my garden and asking to turn up at times that suited them would be actually worse than going out in my own garden on my own terms. (Incidentally I'm not agoraphobic or anything; I don't have a problem with going out per se.)

Definitely going to think hard about this and try to address it this year.

Aarons_mummy

I have a teeny tiny garden and until last year I really really hated gardening however I am happy enough to plant potatoes, herbs etc and some bulbs to make the place pretty. Bulbs are my favourite because you only have to plant them once and they come back year after year, I currently have Lillies in which last year allowed my house to be filled with huge bunches of lillies for many months.

I have some bulbs coming up in a pot (but I've forgotten what they are ) and I have Gladioli and more lily bulbs to go in this season.

It's not a lot but it does mean that I just have to keep the weeds at bay and I am going to try the salt and boiling water trick to see if it'll save me doing between the paths a lot.

snowleopard61

Aarons_mummy wrote: »

I Bulbs are my favourite because you only have to plant them once and they come back year after year

Would that this were true ... having heard it, I bought a whole lot of daffodil bulbs some years ago, and planted them all over the garden, thinking that if nothing else it would look nice in the spring. Not one came up, which was really discouraging. I seem to have the reverse of green fingers. Don't know what went wrong (no, I didn't plant them upside down ) - maybe just got a duff lot of bulbs but it put the mockers on any hope I had of being a gardener! Perhaps I should try again ...