Clearing overgrown garden

davidspd

We've just moved into a property where the garden is very overgrown.





Neither of us have any gardening experience and don't know where to start.

The bit in the photos is on a terrace about 6 foot off the ground (wall at bottom of photo, garage roof bottom right). We have a small patch of grass from the house to the terrace which is OK. Our neighbour says there are actually 2 terraces under the overgrowth but there are so many brambles we can't get a proper look.


Any advice appreciated.
Thanks

ETA: There's also something that looks suspiciously like cannabis growing in there

lostinrates

There might be cannabis. It happens, some one who worked here on a job we suspect smoked in our garden and we got some. Not the end of the world. .

What you do have I think is a horse chestnut sapling. . It has finger like leaves and they droop. Is that what you are seeing?


Regarding clearing, if you can ID tree saplings like that and offer them free for collectors ( you won't want them all even if you want some, you look like you might have a bit of field maple or something there too) people will might be grateful. If I were close my husband and I would nab the saplings for our hedgerows!

ed110220

Think you need some agent orange there ;-)

There are lots of perennial weeds in there that will make gardening a chore (constantly having to pull them up/cut them down) if you don't eliminate them first.

I would spray it all with a brushwood killer such as SBK. Get a pump-up sprayer to do it. It may well need a follow up treatment if anything regrows. Don't be in a hurry as thorough preparation will save a lot of work later. If there are weed grasses use glyphosate.

Once all weeds are dead, then you can plant, landscape etc to your heart's content.

Ed

I_have_spoken

A fair bit of work but maybe worth keeping the plants that are there like the ferns and shrubs.

IMHO 1st priority would get to get a mattock and take out the sycamore and horse chestnut saplings, then grub out the brambles.

After that, take a look to see what's left- could just leave ivy as ground cover and prune the bushes down

lostinrates

I_have_spoken wrote: »

A fair bit of work but maybe worth keeping the plants that are there like the ferns and shrubs.

IMHO 1st priority would get to get a mattock and take out the sycamore and horse chestnut saplings, then grub out the brambles.

After that, take a look to see what's left- could just leave ivy as ground cover and prune the bushes down

I agree, there also looks to be a white lilac up at the back.

Of course these things are replaceable, but plants cost and mature ones give both substance and privacy.


I'd gladly spray stuff that's horrid or not of worth to me. To make the work easier." But in doing so too indiscriminately. You might lose things that would please you or be worth saving,

The other thing to note....is what has done well, it will help you choose plants in the future.

ed110220

lostinrates wrote: »

I agree, there also looks to be a white lilac up at the back.

Of course these things are replaceable, but plants cost and mature ones give both substance and privacy.


I'd gladly spray stuff that's horrid or not of worth to me. To make the work easier." But in doing so too indiscriminately. You might lose things that would please you or be worth saving,

The other thing to note....is what has done well, it will help you choose plants in the future.

This is true, but in my experience unless the plants are especially interesting or valuable or easily moved it's better in the long run to start from scratch if things are very infested with perennial weeds.

I've given the other option a go several times i.e preserving what is there and trying to remove the weeds from amongst them and I think it works out as more time, effort and money.

It does depend on just how overgrown things are. If it's only a fairly small amount of perennial weed as there was here (eg a little bindweed amongst the roses and peonies) then it's a different matter from totally infested and an 'agent orange' solution isn't necessary.

Ed

lostinrates

Thing is, if you go in and spray indiscriminately first fetching you'll never know what there might have been.

Personally, I wouldn't loose a mature lilac in a good place, though I'd be prepared to spray its seedlings, for example. In fact, we have spent some time digging round mature lilacs to move with a digger in the future when we are reading in another part of our garden, and we HAVE sprayed the area they are in, though we watched for over a year to make sure. The celandine we could have lived with,the nettles weeded out, The plums and brambles are what has won us over to spray in that area!

Other areas of the garden I agree, I wish we'd taken your advice, because we didn't care to keep anything. We spray those sort of places now.