Advice on my overgrown garden (inc pics!)

ReflexReaction

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a house with a 30x90ft garden, which was massively overgrown:



I have since spent quite a bit of time pulling out all of the old bushes and trees, burning as I go. As you can see, I've certainly made progress:




However, I am now moving towards being in a position whereby:

• There are lots of roots in the ground from the large bushes / small trees
• I have attempted to remove the bramble roots, but not done a great job - lots left in there / hidden
• I want to remove all of this, and then lay grass!

My plan is to hire a mini excavator (it's about 800cm wide - will fit through the door in my garange!) and pull up the remaining large roots (e.g. against the fence on the left, and over on the right).

I plan to use the excavator/digger to pull up the small amount of grass that exists, and also level the ground a bit more.

I then plan to get a heavy duty (13 horse power) rotorator, and use it across the whole area. I hope that this will pull up any roots / weeds / stones which are under the surface, so that they can be easily picked up and removed.

The rotorator should also leave the ground in a good condition to lay grass seed... I hope.

I wanted to check with you guys regarding this - have I missed anything or am I going about anything the wrong way? I am aware a rotivator is going to blitz certain roots (e.g. the brambles), but I am unsure how else to get rid of something dotted hidden across a garden of this size. Obviously the mini digger will identify some bits...

Please do advise / help - I was hoping to get the digger this weekend and do most of the digger work, with the rotivator the following weekend. I can only spend weekends on this due to work, and we have some extra help (probably 3-4 of us each day).

Does this all sound achievable?

ReflexReaction

The images are quite small / low resolution in the above post, please find a high resolution version at the following link (click the image once it loads):

http://www.hostfile.nl/fpimages/wk0fpf1stw/15597/garden%202%20-%20high%20res.JPG

I am hoping this will allow you experts to better see the state of the ground - the remaining weeds / roots / plants I am hoping to remove with the mini digger...

RAS

Why are you destroying a mature garden?

ReflexReaction

Because there was about 2m sq of grass. I want to have a seating area, a bbq, possibly a hot tub one day, an area for my future children to play football, an area for swings one day, etc,etc,etc. I am however leaving trees etc in place, just removing some bushes / weeds etc

antw23uk

Ahh what a shame. A good trim back and that would be looking beautiful in a few weeks

Money_maker

Glad I'm not the only one who liked the beautifully secretive path down through the mature shrubs for hidey games for the children and privacy for the adults. Now its an old barbecue and a washing line.

SailorSam

Wow how lucky are you to have a lovely big garden like that. I would have left it 'mature' and cleaned it up.

shegirl

ReflexReaction wrote: »

Because there was about 2m sq of grass. I want to have a seating area, a bbq, possibly a hot tub one day, an area for my future children to play football, an area for swings one day, etc,etc,etc. I am however leaving trees etc in place, just removing some bushes / weeds etc

Looks like more than 2m sq to me!A lot more.

You could have had all that and kept it beautiful

Good luck with it

ReflexReaction

Actually it's more of an illusion. The garden was in a bad state. many of the trees had died as other plants attacked. The other end of the garden is completely overgrown with brambles and weeds, and under there rubble and mud. It was unusable in its current state.

Those of you commenting on how it looks now... Obviously it doesn't look great right now, however its not finished is it. The garden was excessively overgrown - while it was 30ft wide the usable space was about 5 ft in most places, if that. Most of the plants and bushes were getting attacked by brambles and there was no way to fix this without removing the bushes.

Del_Astra

Hi OP

As for how you are preparing the ground, you mention removing the stones. By all means the large bolder type yes, but smaller ones will assist with drainage. What type of soil is it? if its clay you might want to add some sharp sand for example. When it rains do puddles form on it? From the pics it doesn't look like you will have much trouble with grass, I don't think the high res pics are working though.

As for the fences on the left, ask the owners if you can paint them if you intend too. It might also be worth letting them know you plan to have the heavy plant machines in, just so they don't panic and worry what you are up to.

Going off topic but have you considered planting some veg? Onion, Beetroot, leeks, lets, spring onion, beans, peas etc can all go in now / by they time you prepare that. That is what I woud do, and tatties, lots of them.

I do understand it is you garden however and you may not want to grow things for eating in it, trust me any future children will love getting in there and well doing what kids do, getting dirty playing with worms etc. Doesn't have to be that size, but you could easily have say 3 beds (for rotation) in a garden that size.

Anyway enjoy your garden, hoping the weather lets you get out into the garden this weekend. It is a struggle when you can just do weekends and it pours down.

Davesnave

Thank goodness I didn't come here for advice on my garden! :rotfl:I left a lot less than the OP. Sometimes, one must crack eggs to make an omelette.

The digger will get most roots, but it won't find everything, especially bramble roots. Expect them to come back for some while!

You should also think how you'll recycle the top soil attached to the grass.

As regards preparing for a lawn, a powerful rotovator might dig the ground reasonably deeply and break clods, but it wont leave a fine enough tilth or roll the ground for you. There's quite a lot of preparation work involved.

Also, if you are not up to digging out roots of shrubs etc, are you sure you can handle a big rotovator? Some people find they are rather exhausting to control. Just a thought....:)