Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Re: bamboo, Google just fed me this article:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/problem-solving/bamboo-invasion-should-worried-japanese-knotweed/

Advice/thoughts please. We are looking to tidy up/improve the garden a bit, shed roof and back wall are rotten, 'raised' beds are rotten and falling apart, the borders grow over the grass and make muddy/mossy patches, my partner hates the bark around the beds and in general we want it to look nice!

We have worked through a lot of ideas and settled on this as our preferred option. Evening sun is in the corner with the pergola (also a decent deck for bbqs etc at the house end). We would gain a slightly bigger shed, biggest job I see is leveling the ground and replacing the bark chips with a brick area. Got the idea of using old bricks as we had about 250 bricks left over from removing an interior wall.

Any major flaws with the idea/layout? I figure the bricks will still drain if laid on a bed of sand and the joins filled with sand. I now realise we need LOADS of bricks (20-25 m sq) which is a ball ache.

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Long read....

Other than the end bit it looks quite nice. Personally I wouldn't worry about overflowing beds as the grass grows back, but if you don't like it then two obvious solutions are; 1. raised beds as the overflow is raised off the grass. Altho a shadow may be cast which could effect the grass. 2. Make the beds and the grass that borders it more wild. That way you loose the distinction of the bed. Downside with that is if you have a narrow garden it visually closes, rather than widens the space.

Evening sun is in the corner with the pergola

I'm a bit opinionated about pergolas, but if it's evening sun are you sure you want something blocking it out? If it was blasting midday sun I get it, but in our country I'd be looking to maximise it. If your OH heart is set on a pergola then try and design it to block the least amount of sun and think carefully before growing things up it. Maybe just a single elegant climbing rose.

I would consider raising the ground height of the back section to add interest and levels. If that's too much work then I'd raise up that horizontal bed and plant something that'll give you a low screen.

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Thanks. I like the garden as well, just want to clean it up a bit and make it more useable. I didn’t mention but the bit you have drawn on is currently planted and means access to the beds at the top is annoying and people end up walking over it etc. That’s one of the reasons for the bricks going all round the beds.

The plan is actually to have a Japanese acer and some other trees/grasses in pots on the bricks creating a bit of separation. Also moving the apple tree (which I pruned a few weeks ago) from the back left corner to halfway down the right hand side where the border meets the bricks. But I hid those to make sketch up run faster and forgot to turn them back on!

Re the pergola, I know what you mean, the sun is more on the left hand side than the back wall, especially with the shed casting a shadow. That was the reason for having the seating protruding, so you have the feeling/look of structure without overpowering everything.

I won't comment on design, but on pure technicalities the bricks are probably a bad idea. Interior bricks are unlikely to be frost proof, virtually impossible to match and laid on sand areas WILL sink. Also, for an area of 25 metres you will need 1100 bricks at £1 per brick if you're lucky, these should be laid on concrete with a fall of a degree or so to clear water if you want the area to last 5 minutes.

Better, cheaper and easier to lay surfacing materials do exist....

LFGSS fun and games...

Last week a teeny tiny decking for @lowbrows.

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....and today a base for @stevo_com for his new Wendy House. Area cleared yesterday and 5 tons barrowed (not a short run), mixed and laid today. That hurt...

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One final post on pruning. If you are patient, much can be achieved. This tree was over 20' high and a tangled mess. It took 3 years of winter pruning to sort out to avoid shock, but now every apple (Bramley) can be picked with just a short set of steps.

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Thanks for getting it done even before you originally said you would, plus for making my fence look totally on the piss!

You'll be glad to know it already has fox tracks in it.

Looking slightly different to a year ago.

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Tidy work as ever Colin.
That's going to be a monster of a Wendy house ;)

He's not totally off in his description. This but 15'x10' with roof windows.

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Install dog.

Remember, there is a slight fall on the concrete to avoid water pooling beneath Chateau Stevo, but the fence might not be quite entirely level.

the fence might not be quite entirely level.

It was bolted to your wall....

I'll split the difference and say it's installed on a curve, camera phone parallax yadayadayada....

Install dog.

I already have two cats to piss by the front door and shit in the shower, thank you very much.

My wall is level.

Anyway, it became your wall the instant you paid for it.

My wall

Mell's wall

people end up walking over it etc.

Good point.

One of our raised beds and a flowerbed sits right in the path of desire to our brick shed and alley. Luckily for most of the year I can walk on the wall, but it is a pain and will go when we finally do our patio at some point.

True. I can lay bricks and blocks perfectly well, but Mel is infinitely better, which is why I pay her a pittance and am infallibly rude to her.

Good thing you finished yesterday, it's absolutely pissing it down here.

That is why I asked on here, suspected there may be some technical issues and after doing rough calculations I realised that it wouldn't be a cheap option, just because I had 250 bricks already.

If I don't mind it it being 'rustic' is there any way it can be made to work without concrete? If not, what other surface materials would you suggest? We want it to be quite natural and blend in, not stand out as a big mass of shiny stone?

Well that makes me feel a lot better about the deck.
I'm not sure install dog does the trick in London with foxes. Ours could give two shits about me and the pup being in the garden, the cheeky bastards.
Anyhow following on from the above picture, I'm just debating whether to get someone in to do the lawn (rotovate, sand/topsoil mix to level, and then re-turf) or just to try and do it myself in the span of 2 days.
I'm fairly efficient when I get an idea stuck in my head, so can anyone persuade me to not try and get it done before the heavy rain on thursday?

The alternative is wait till late march, when we've done the beds, which is probably the logical choice, but its currently a fucking mud-pit out there, which when you add small lab pup= nightmares (however good she is).

If you can rent a rotavator then I say go for it. between three of us we did 3/4 of an acre in a weekend, don't reccomend that. But we also did a couple of 200sqm lawns in a day each from rotavating to turf laying. The only thing I would say is make sure you have a really good rake, in fact if you are renting a rotavator it may be worth seeing if the hire place rents out landscaping rakes, they are around £50 to buy, and I have never found much of a use for mine beyond laying turf...

Very nice.

landscaping rakes, they are around £50 to buy, and I have never found much of a use for mine beyond laying turf

Thinking of getting one to aid putting down some top dressing. My lawn is a bit of a mess with holes, bumps etc but I'd rather fix it slowly over a few years than dig it up and start again.

They are great for getting a really fine tilth. My brother who is an actual landscaper is very protective over his, but then if you spend 8 hours a day using it I guess you get to be!

This took a day to rotovate and rake to perfect, after we had suitably compacted it by running a 3 ton digger and 2 ton dumper over it for a week.

Nobody without access to advanced weapon systems could separate my landscaping rake from me.

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