First time garden-owner - help needed!

95 Posts

Hi all,
So we bought our first house in June (yay!) And the front garden looked lovely and the seller had obviously taken some time to make it look nice. I tried to keep on top of the weeding initially but it was all coming back through again so quickly that I kind of gave up! I've since learned that the seller got cheap compost from the council a couple of years back that came from everyone's green bins and since then the weeds were a big issue for him too.
I'm a little ashamed of how untidy it looks now and feel like I need to do something with it, but I don't know what!
We have long term plans for the garden, including digging part up to remove a step and replace the lead water pipe and possibly having a driveway. We've also got the whole inside of the house to do up first so I don't want to spend too much on the garden at this point.
Do I:
1. Leave it for now. Wait until spring, dig all of the soil out, replace with fresh and start from new?
2. Leave it as it is/clear the weeds now, plant bulbs for spring and do my best to keep fighting the battle of the weeds?
If the second option, do you have any tips for me as a newbie?
The garden is north facing. There used to be plants on the side nearest the house but they, and their replacements, have all died quite quickly, possibly because of the shade from the house?
Thanks

So we bought our first house in June (yay!) And the front garden looked lovely and the seller had obviously taken some time to make it look nice. I tried to keep on top of the weeding initially but it was all coming back through again so quickly that I kind of gave up! I've since learned that the seller got cheap compost from the council a couple of years back that came from everyone's green bins and since then the weeds were a big issue for him too.
I'm a little ashamed of how untidy it looks now and feel like I need to do something with it, but I don't know what!
We have long term plans for the garden, including digging part up to remove a step and replace the lead water pipe and possibly having a driveway. We've also got the whole inside of the house to do up first so I don't want to spend too much on the garden at this point.
Do I:
1. Leave it for now. Wait until spring, dig all of the soil out, replace with fresh and start from new?
2. Leave it as it is/clear the weeds now, plant bulbs for spring and do my best to keep fighting the battle of the weeds?
If the second option, do you have any tips for me as a newbie?
The garden is north facing. There used to be plants on the side nearest the house but they, and their replacements, have all died quite quickly, possibly because of the shade from the house?
Thanks



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I wouldn't do any work on the area you would use for a drive. If a drive is going to be done I'd go for option 2. I don't any tips myself other than try a salt water solution on the weeds, salts meant to be good at killing weeds, you could use something stronger eg off the shelf product but if you have pets it's not ideal.
We have a cat so I'm quite cautious about using any chemicals, which will probably make more work for me haha!
Lewis Carroll
Congrats on your new home btw.
The only normal people you know are the ones you don’t know very well
Hopefully, other people you know will give you lots of self seeded this and that, that they don't want, to tide you over until you have had a chance to get yourself a bit more settled and you've had time to see how the sun falls and plan how you want to use the front garden eventually. And then you just cram them in really close and dust on loads of bone meal, give them a good water and hope they take well enough to keep going through winter.
The other thing you could do is to again have a one day blitz and then sow something very thickly to again take you through to late spring, mint maybe or winter greens or leaves or some wildflower mix or wallflowers or something that will get away in the next fortnight or so.
There's a college garden near here that used a wildflower seed mix on a bed they usually plant up with bedding and they sowed it so thickly that it was absolutely impossible for anything else to get a toehold. It has been a stunning success and is much admired by many locals.
Do any of those pansies/violas have seed pods and can you collect and scatter those around too?
Whatever you decide, enjoy your new house and garden and do what works for you, happy grubbing in the soil, goldfinches.
Scallops. A host of legends surround this, one of the loveliest of seafoods, except when overcooked. My favourite true story concerns the young lady scallop preparation worker, interviewed by the 'New Yorker' Magazine. When asked for her honest opinion of the shellfish she said "They don't have much personality".
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