Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Just like having a lawn in the first place, it is a Victorian fashion designed to display your wealth

Only if you go vertically, horizontal stripes make your garden look bigger. As does, er, trimming your bushes.

Mowed the desire paths but leaving the rest again this year.

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What's this? Conker tree? I planted some, but also various other autumnal findings, like hazelnuts, beechnuts, acorns etc

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Yep, looks like a horse chestnut

Yes yes. Did this yesterday too. Narrow paths created. Leave the rest. I’ve loved watching the goldfinches eat the dandelion seed heads.

No Mow May - give yourself a break from mowing for the month.

I planted four pyracanthas in 2021 to cover back fence. Which only gets direct sunlight from about 6pm during May to September. all but one plant has established well, with wire training. Intended as a security barrier. In time I will cut the training wires. Let my neighbour replace fence panel there after.

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Big improvement from the mess I had when I moved in 2019.. from this was half cleared

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To this in 2021, pyracantha planted just a foot tall

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No mow May is ok, but…well…what happens at the end of May? You’ve made an inviting habitat for bugs etc to live in, and then come June you take a big spinning blade to it all. Fuck you caterpillars!

I’m signed up for no mow May, June, July and August (I’ve already successfully delivered on no May April). Planning one cut at the end of August / beginning of September. That’ll be it for the year.

I fucking hate lawns, lawnmowers and strimmers. Might invest in a scythe. Scythes are cool.

Our front lawn has always been crap so when redoing it got shot down by my good lady I decided to planted shit loads of bulbs in it. Tulips just going over now. Alliums, gladioli en route.

I wanted ti do the same in the back but sadly it was a firm no.

Scythes are cool

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Yep, you’re right, but for most people mowing less often is still a win. For the rest of the growing season, Plantlife recommends mowing once every four weeks, and promotes the “mohican” mowing approach, where patches of longer grass are allowed to grow within the shorter areas or at the edges of the lawn.

I'm going to mow the paths when I can be arsed but the rest won't get cut again until next year now

lol nice

Oh yeah, 100% I don’t want to be all ‘perfect, enemy of the good’, just, you know, if you’re no mow curious then it’s good to hear the maximalist approach too

Having just spaffed £60 on a small Bay plant I'd be doing what I could to keep it. But maybe get it in a container.

pyracanthas ... a security barrier

Good choice, those thorns are fierce!

No chance of containerizing.

I smashed out part of the raised bed to get a look at the root spread and profile.

My OH couldn't understand why I was bothering when the builders are going to do it all. However, I know what will happen: the guys will start knocking it out, then find the root spread too big, then put me on the spot to make a snap decision.

I think it will be fine. There will be an odd profile to start, but over time it'll age and bay bark is great at healing. So if you have time you can slowly smooth out the profile of the trunk to some extent.

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More garden before & after photos plz thnx.

View from the top before work starts at the end of the week.

Slightly mixed feelings overall. Now going with black lime (see sample tile) over our original choice due to stock... some sort of slate I can't recall. Not getting the drainage I wanted due to a veto from finance. A bit sad to be loosing some of the beds which had enjoyable plants. Also the kids love walking along the beds... although they've both hurt themselves numerous times falling as it's a pretty unforgiving surface.

However, the patio simply isn't big enough for all these raised beds. It's the sort of design that would work in a bigger house with a patio half the size of the garden.

Key issues:

• Red - Path to the alley on the right (and hard to see but the path to the brick shed is a bit more clunky thank it needs to be
  
• Purple - Left French door opening is blocked in summer and opens on to a bed
  
• Blue - Shade when seated - beds limit the table and chairs moving back and top raised bed makes the parasol hard to position to be in shade
  
• General - uneven causes water pooling, hard to keep clean so looks a bit shit, rough finish
  
  

Aim for after is:

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Question to the hive:

if I dump a load of soil with broken up plants and roots in a regular tardis compost bin now, will the weeds die off, or will they just go dormant?

The main garden soil is such heavy clay that the idea of skipping all this nice crumbley black soil is killing me.

But there are an awful lot of weeds, wild flowers, and mint in there.

Most things will die if you exclude light for a decent amount of time. Seeds from perennial weeds will probably survive and I don't fancy your chances of killing mint that way.
If it's all broken up soil, the mint roots should be easy enough to spot and pull out - they're quite fleshy.

Definitely some weed seeds won't be killed by a standard composter, it would need to be industrial type sterilisation for that. Some can last decades just waiting for the right conditions.

But even if you did kill them all, new weed seeds will blow in or be shat out by pigeons or arrive however the old ones did.

I would concentrate on removing all the weed roots that you can see, exclude light for as long as you can, then use the soil to fill the bottom of a raised bed, but mulch the top with fresh sterile compost so the weed seeds stay well buried.

Cheers both. Pretty much what I thought all round.

Depending on time I think I'm going to just chuck the best in the tardis to store and mix in with the current compost, then chuck the worst on the "veg patch" (non-existent this year due to nothing germinating).