Dat Garden Tho...

I'll soon update with all the info and in-progress photos...

Short version: the other half and I have moved in together and bought a house. To fit our budget we bought a place with a seriously overgrown garden.

The 2013 SWB Transit had more than 30 ton-bags of green waste, and a half-dozen full cargo loads of hedge. At this point we'd done maybe 50% of the garden. The Oleo Mac 14" chainsaw earned its place in the shed, felling more than a dozen trees and hedge-trees.

We had two very very large trees to come down in the back, one was overhanging a neighbour's shed and I feared damage. There was another very big established tree in the middle out front, that was undermining the driveway. These were felled by a local contractor who then chipped and disposed of the waste. It was a fair few tons.

We have the stumps still in the ground, and are considering a stump-grinder session from the contractor to get as much of it mulched as possible. The alternative is dig down enough to cut them far below the surface and then let them die a death over years to come.

I asked about wildflowers on the AQA thread, these are the responses:

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17386833/

@hugo7

Idk if it's the answer you want. But personally I would tidy up, get some pots and then plan what you want it to look like.

Fucking around with wild flower gardens is generally a fools errand. Spend your time planting what you want to have.

@Belagerent

IMO wildflower gardens bang, I dunno when the best time to plant the seeds is though, most of them all germinate at different times so.

I buy mine from here:

https://wildflowerlawnsandmeadows.com/

For best results you'll want to kill your grass first though.

@CYOA

Obligatory get these, support bees*: https://www.pollenize.org.uk/shop-seeds

*other pollinators may also benefit.

@Belagerent

One thing to consider is that if you have a shady area that not even grass can thrive in you might want a specialist wild flower seed mix for shade, and even that might not play the hits.

@hugo7

Right but the aim is this sort of thing:

... and it's mid-May with at least a weekend's work tidying and clearing the rubbish. So seeds in the ground what, penultimate weekend of May/last weekend of May?

What about the in-ground stumpery on the left? I assume they're removing it, so how are the seeds going to feel about being stamped on while those are removed?

IMHO the max amount effort they should commit is grabbing one of those wild seed mix boxes from the supermarket and giving the ground a rake, sow and a water. All while keeping expectations low. Otherwise it'll be high effort, low reward vs buying living plants and getting stuff in the ground.

I'd be much more inclined to grow wild looking flowers in pots (cornflowers, etc.) then plant on in specific locations. That way you could be starting them now without being blocked by the other work. Then pair with a couple of cool grasses and some salvia. It'll be <£50, give interest with the right vibe guaranteed success.

Also it's dull, but you need to do the hard landscaping first.

Eg

https://www.jparkers.co.uk/border-collec­tion-2-2-x-26m

https://www.jparkers.co.uk/vigorous-and-­large-flowered-salvia-1020623c

https://www.jparkers.co.uk/verbena-hasta­ta-collection-1019231c

@Belagerent

I don't disagree with you, if they feel like the spend and the effort of putting plants in the ground then that will definitely yield instant results. I share your general distrust of "wildflower meadows", they're not the easy breezy solution the picture on the boxes would lead you to believe.

My "wildflower meadow" has taken years to get anywhere and it's still not that amazing compared to stuff like that picture, I've mostly just got leucanthemums. (The rest of my garden slays so it's not an issue)

You can also try and do both, buy some stuff like what you posted, and also dump a bunch of wildflower seed into the bare ground. Could be a waste of seed, might work, who knows.

@T_Unit

I got given a wild flower bomb thing at a wedding, chucked it out the window and have now been plagued by wild geraniums for ever. Best not to over think it, throw some seeds around, trust nature.

@Sumo

I bought a few packs of wildflower seeks, chucked them in the flower beds around the edge of the garden with little thought. Nothing's grown. Maybe I should burry them next time.

@gbj_tester

feedthebirds.meme

@JurekB

I (accidentally) bought 20 times (yes, 20) as much wildflower bombs are are required for my 5m x 5m garden.
Threw them onto the grass at the beginning of last year.
Last year not much happened.
This year there are some wild flowers, but I think I should've probably rid the garden of couch grass as I think that is stunting/preventing the growth of much.

So some very helpful advice.

The other half has a lot of potted plants that need planting...

My hope is that I can scatter wildflower and pollinator seeds across the garden where the grass is already dead. Almost all the brown area was tree-covered and the ground is relatively soft from constant leaf-mulch over a number of years.

The house was left empty for a couple of years, and the garden was not tended to for years before that. There's some very fertile soil that needs turning and exploiting.

Hidden in all the brown are the hardiest remnants of old plants. Maybe 4 or 5 roses are now cut down to stumps, "if they die they die" style. There were no signs of leaves or flowers but the stems are healthy.

The garden is north-facing and the incline of the hill means there is all-day sun from morning to night. Highest midday sun appears to be directly on top of the house.

I'd prefer to let nature take its course, rather than spend a lot of money on instant gratification... but we'll soon see how long before nursed plants get planted from pots.

Photos of the back…

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It looked so nice

So nice unless you own it. It was significantly overgrown. The roots were undermining everything, pushing the fence, overgrown into neighbouring gardens, and roots had blocked the waste drain for the house.

Unfortunately the height meant it wasn’t possibly to just trim back. Besides, it was a lot of garden lost, and with it a lot of light.

I admit my ignorance, sorry if it came across snidey

Having seen the garden, the photos don't do justice to the amount of work that must have gone in to get it to the current state!

Tress in gardens are great, but they need to be kept in a sensible proportion to the garden and surrounding area.

Looking forward to the updates.

A stump grinder will deal with those stumps on the left easy peasy in a couple of hours, wouldn't even be too expensive. If you decide against that then you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by simply sawing off a 'lid' about an inch thick, etching out a 0s and Xs grid in the remaining stump, pouring in table salt and then placing the lid back, will kill it off no problem.

I know, I know. It was a ‘pretty’ tree. However it completely shadowed the neighbouring houses.

For reference, this shows how tall it was vs the guy who cut it down (this one wasn’t me), and how much of the garden the waste covered.

That’s just one of more than 10 different trees that needed sorting.

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I have quite enjoyed my pseudo wild garden. But I do think though that purely "letting nature take its course" might be a bit aesthetically challenging, to say the least, but I do think that it's a good point of inspiration to take.

What I've done over the past 6 years or so, is first of all set the architecture of the garden, where do i want "beds" where do I want "lawn", do I need to do any hard landscaping? Then I put some very stable perennials in, a phormium, some big grasses, a small crab apple tree, a garrya elliptica, honeysuckle. These plants are very boring and not particularly pollinator friendly, but they provided a background structure to try and work with.

Then over several years I've planted stuff over and over, trying to focus on pollinator friendly things and things which can naturalise or spread, which are the wildflowery natural appearing type things. It takes a lot of trial and error to work out what works, what you like, and what kind of maintenance you need to do, what seedlings are things you hate and will want to weed out, what are things you like and want to keep, what things are thugs and will crowd out other things, what things can be quite happy in a corner, etc.

My garden now is quite low maintenance, and mostly I do let nature do its thing, but that's AFTER I applied considerable effort (And I still do sometimes, but maybe only 1-3 days per year).

It sounds like you're in a good place overall though! Wish I had some hardwood logs in my garden to try and attract beetles. Have often thought about procuring some.

^this is excellent advice.

We started with a suburban retirees garden. Not quite my thing, but it provided a solid base. Then stated tailoring it to our needs/tastes and decreasing the maintenance required.

Once our first came along I added (to varying success) more wild flowers and made it into a wilder, lower maintenance garden. But the fundamentals were there.

I'd also point out that you started with a garden that had let nature take its course 😉

I've got one of these bad boys out the front of my house - at this time of year it becomes a buzzing bush, full of bees

https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/89974/pieris-japonica-mountain-fire/details

It looks nice too - loads of red shoots in the spring

I'd also point out that you started with a garden that had let nature take its course 😉

To questionable degrees of success… ha!

You now have a lovely view of neighbouring houses and where will all the nesting birds go? 😉 congratulations on the house purchase!