Easy cheap ideas to fix small garden?

cavegrrl

We have just moved in to a rented flat which we discovered comes with a little shared garden.
It's a lovely sunny spot surrounded by old buildings giving it that 'walled garden' feeling and I would love to take advantage of it in the spring/summer (especially as we don't currently share it!)
The only problem is the state of it - it's all gravelly and patchy lawn, very uneven. I started googling the best way to redo the lawn but the answers weren't very positive, with lots of peoples attempts failing...
So I'm looking for ideas to make over this little patch.. Low cost and low effort (tall order, I know). We don't mind putting in 3-4 days of hard graft to get it sorted but on the whole we won't have much time to keep actively work on it.

We will be checking with the landlord first but he is pretty laid back and if it is an improvement, I'm sure he will be more than happy.

We're planning to stay here 2/3 years.

Image to follow

cavegrrl

Here it is, excuse the washing..

SailorSam

For plants i think you should go the £shop, get things that grow into little bushes, even if you only keep them in buckets.
Check Freecycle if anyone is giving away gravel

DaftyDuck

That lawn will go green and pleasant for a bit of good raking and cutting. Cheapest lawnmower you can buy, or try Freecycle. Rake the lawn three times a week. Set lawnmower to maximum height for grass, and cut every week. Keep it lightly watered in dry weather, spend £2.00 at a Poundshop on grass seed X 1 and fertiliser X 1 (£3 if they sell lawn weed treatment, but I wouldn't bother).

You rent, so buy pots and plants for the pots, so you can take them (or flog them) when you leave. I'd aim for herbs for their scent, so Thyme, Rosemary, Sage, maybe a Bay tree and Lavenders for flowers and bees.

You could stick a few hanging wall planters on the sunny walls, and bung some bedding plants in them. Add a grow bag with tomatoes, and another with cut and come again salad crops, and you are made for summer barbecues. I await my invite.

A good tip is look for a nearby keen gardener (spot the beautiful garden, and the crippled slave engaged in weeding), engage in conversation, admit you know nothing, and ask for advice. You may well leave clutching enough cuttings and seedlings to plant a jungle.

My first garden, shared with my now-wife at Uni, was not much bigger.

We have progressed!

bugslet

I think that could look really nice!

Echo what Dafty Duck says, see if you can blag some cuttings from friends or family. I got a fab Fatsia that way and two years later it's looking a really good plant!

RAS

That could be a fabulous little garden.

The washing is important; it demonstrates where you might (might not should) consider hard surfacing. Alternatively you might want to relocate the line?

You appear to have some sort of board and some wheels? Is this something you want/own or something you wish to remove? If it has been there for a while the ground underneath will be grass free and it might make sense use that area for growing stuff, perhaps digging back towards the out house.

Strings run down form the beam under outhouse roof to pegs (tentpegs from the poundshop) for climbers? That also hides the missing window.

Go to Lidl if you have one and look at runner beans which are actually french beans, scarlet runners, climbing sugersnaps, sweet peas, climbing nasturtium (Indian Cress) and canary creeper. You only need 4 scarlet runner beans for 2 people to get a good crop.

For height go for Cosmos, sunflowers (annuals) and maybe blag a few foxgloves off someone (assuming you have no children) and poppies. Mix in the tall annual herbs like coriander (grow your own seed), dill, fennel etc.

Then add some of the woody herbs if you can get them from people on freecycle or just by asking. Tell folks at work and someone will have some spares.

And defo you needs a seat or two, even if only a planed plank and some old bricks to make a bench.

cavegrrl

A bit belated but thanks for the ideas everyone!

I'm actually quite green-fingered in terms of growing plants, and I have a lot of plants waiting at my mum's to bring to our garden, but I was more looking for advice for the state of the garden as it is - I've never had to re-do a lawn on poor soil before.. I'd Googled the predicament and found the majority of people with the same state had put a lot of work in to find that the lawn failed and they ended up paying someone else to do it all. We don't really have time or money to waste.
So I wanted to avoid that really.. If we can't improve the lawn, what is the next best cheapest option as a 'base'? Looking at the garden next to it, which previously was a part of this garden (the landlord said he divided the garden in two to allow our flat some garden), the lawn on their side is in a similar state but it looks more like their garden was gravel and grass has just grown through, whereas ours is more sparse but still stony. If that makes sense.

My plans for the garden after the lawn issue is resolved is to have a small raised bed for veg growing, pots of herbs and bee-friendly flowers around the edge and one or two washing up bowls sunk in the ground with water & stones for frogs.. The current setup is a bit too devoid of wildlife for me!

Washing-line wise, we have just been given a free rotary airer from Freegle - the current washing line from the photo is attached to part of the shed that is rotten, and I believe it belongs to the other flat anyway - I just took advantage of it on that day as currently they have only used the half on their side.

The board appears to be a shed base - going to prop that up somewhere.. The wheels are part of something to do with railways I'm told.. Not sure if I'll be able to move them even so they may just have to be a feature.

Might be worth mentioning we are in the first floor flat, so no access to power or water. Luckily, I have a push-along lawn mower in storage and a slimline waterbutt I can connect to the shed.

torbrex

As far as the lawn goes, you are not really wanting a putting green are you?
Grass will grow on any type of soil, all it needs is a chance and as has been said already, cut what is there down to 15/20mm and rake out all the dead stuff, the grass will love you for that.
Go to town and stick a fork in every 200mm and then sow the grass seed all over, it will be lush by the autumn

cavegrrl

DaftyDuck wrote: »

That lawn will go green and pleasant for a bit of good raking and cutting. Cheapest lawnmower you can buy, or try Freecycle. Rake the lawn three times a week. Set lawnmower to maximum height for grass, and cut every week. Keep it lightly watered in dry weather, spend £2.00 at a Poundshop on grass seed X 1 and fertiliser X 1 (£3 if they sell lawn weed treatment, but I wouldn't bother).

What lawn is there is probably too long for my push along lawnmower to deal with and the soil feels quite compact, do you think it would be easiest just to dig it all up, re-sow the lawn and progress with the lawn care from there? Would I need to remove a lot of the gravel-like stones or could I just rake them into the soil/add some compost and go from there? Sorry for the questions, you seem to know a lot about lawns

moneyistooshorttomention

Some good suggestions.

Errrrm.....but I'm wondering what way you can implement them in view of this being a shared garden? That bit is puzzling me - as the person you share it with might have different ideas when they come onto the scene.

Were you thinking of following these suggestions for, say, the left-hand half of the garden and leaving the right-hand half as is or planning to say to the sharer (once they are on the scene) that what you did was just temporary and, now they are there ready for their 50% share of the say that you will both re-do the plan together?

cavegrrl

torbrex wrote: »

As far as the lawn goes, you are not really wanting a putting green are you?
Grass will grow on any type of soil, all it needs is a chance and as has been said already, cut what is there down to 15/20mm and rake out all the dead stuff, the grass will love you for that.
Go to town and stick a fork in every 200mm and then sow the grass seed all over, it will be lush by the autumn

Thank you, no not looking for a putting green! Just looking for something I can actually mow and isn't quite so patchy/weedy/rough looking. That sounds fairly easy so I will give that a try first, just need to figure out if I can adjust my lawnmower