Clueless & need a nice garden!

SonOfPearl

First an admission...I am very far from being green-fingered! I badly need some help and advice from a friendly soul to help me change my garden into something that I'm not ashamed for my friends to see!

I moved into my current 4-bed home more than 5 years ago, and I still haven't done anything to improve the garden...

At the moment, it just looks a mess - it's fairly big and overgrown with grass reaching up to my waist, and has a rather unattractive looking shed in the back left corner, which I don't need.

I don't have time to do much (or any, honestly) gardening, so I want to have something that is nice to look at, but is very low maintenance. But I don't know where to start to do it in a moneysaving way. I'm sure garden designers must cost an absolute fortune, but I don't have the knowledge to do it myself.

Please help! Any advice will be very much appreciated!

theoretica

Why not start by looking at friends' gardens and asking for advice from the people whose gardens you admire?

Intentionally seeding the grass as a wildflower area with a few shrubs of the sort that take care of themselves and a laid path is one idea that shouldn't take too much upkeep. It depends on what you have in the way of invasive nasties to get rid of.

Leif

If you don't want to do any gardening, then you have little choice other than concrete, slabs or decking. Gravel will get weeds. If you are prepared to prune shrubs once or twice a year, then get some shrubs such as flowering quince, cotoneaster, and so on. Grass needs cutting, every few weeks. If you leave it, it will degenerate. I think you want something for nothing, and you need to put in some effort.

Davesnave

SonOfPearl wrote: »

I don't have time to do much (or any, honestly) gardening, so I want to have something that is nice to look at, but is very low maintenance. But I don't know where to start to do it in a moneysaving way. I'm sure garden designers must cost an absolute fortune, but I don't have the knowledge to do it myself.

Imagine posting on the Investment board that you have no time to do any research, and that you're sure an IFA will cost tons, but can they please advise what to do with a windfall. You would need to answer many questions before anyone could hope to help effectively. You are not responding here!

An IFA or a garden designer can only deal with the here & now, so when conditions change, there will be a need for further effort/input. To be honest, the garden will require much more tweaking than the average portfolio!

Grass is what you have, so if there's no enthusiam there, the easiest way would be to keep it and invest in a decent power mower to get it cut quickly, or accept that you must pay someone else to come in and strim/tidy. Over time, as Leif says, you might buy undemanding, large-growing shrubs and gradually replace some lawn with those, because they'll only need maintenance occasionally.

But what sort of area are we talking about here? That will make quite a difference to any cost/strategy, just as it matters whether someone has £500 or £50 000 to invest.

EDIT: This opens a whole new can of worms, but might be worth considering:

http://www.landshare.net/

Nan_Dingle

I'm sure garden designers must cost an absolute fortune, but I don't have the knowledge to do it myself.

Well you can always bell a few in your area and see what they'll do, and the budget for the makeover. If you leave it, a gardener will be £10-£15/hr to mow and tidy.

Leif

Davesnave wrote: »

or accept that you must pay someone else to come in and strim/tidy. ...

It can be hard to find someone, depending on the area, but a semi-retired chap(ess) might be amenable to cutting your lawn each month, maybe every two weeks if needed.

Alternatively, you might actually find you like gardening. I must admit that cutting the lawn can be a chore, but I do enjoy pruning shrubs and weeding, it is relaxing, easy, and rewarding when you see the results. Apparently the secret is a little often. It is easy to remove a small weed seedling, not so easy to pull out a large growth of weeds.

kerleytops

Buy or borrow a garden design book, make a paper plan of your garden, Be aware of where the sun is and which areas are shaded.
Think what you want to do in the garden...sit and stare? Children's games? Sunbathe? Could the shed become a summer house?
There are different hard landscapes available such as gravel(( in different sizes, colours) bark, decking, artificial grass, shaped paving.

tanith

You at least need to get the grass under control and that's a basic that it seems you don't have time for , if you can't pay someone else then the only other person who can do anything is you so get your gloves on and get out there , you never know you might actually enjoy yourself.