Help! Gardening 101 for this Idiot

[PedantMarina]

Just that, really. For the first time in 20+ years I've got a garden, and I have to admit, I hadn't really learned a lot back when I had one before. I know a few bibs and bobs, but I still just don't geddit.

And this garden needs a LOT of work. But more on that in a moment.

As I see it, I have four main things to deal with:

1. bad legacy and [some] dodgy neighbours - The flat had been unlived in for nearly a year, and the locals have gotten used to treating it like a dump. Round the back there's a drug dealer, whose clients are frequently chucking their works over the [c.6' high] fence (although this seems to be decreasing) (I hope). As to the front, if we didn't have a chain up (temporary measure) our property would still be being used as free parking for allsorts. CCTV, bollards, etc, will come later, as and when we can afford it, but we're hoping our initial gardening efforts will do something to remind people the house is - ya know, inhabited. By people who care about their home.
   

1. slugs. I've even found slugs in my kitchen - like, how TF did they get in?!?
   

1. a general lack of talent and/or knowledge. Can anybody advise me about bulbs, for instance?
   

1. not a lot of money to throw at the situation. The grass seed in 99p stores, for instance, filled me with unrequited longing.
   

The garden is small (12' ft at widest and about 40' long), but was in really dire condition! I've already cleared it out of rubble, some weeds, but I now need to tackle some more of the weeds and re-establish some grass. I think, provided I make the grass nice, I'm happy to keep it simple, maybe a bit of border along one edge.

In the front, we have a planting bed along the path. What kinds of flowers can I plant that will stay in [most] year round? Or a combination of flowers that appear at different times?

And are some combinations of plants bad? (I'm thinking about how daffodils and narcissi, when in water, kill other plants). There's also what might be a bed (with pebbles) beneath the windows of the house, but DP thinks that's more to do with drainage, so we shouldn't plant on that. If anybody wants to weigh in, please do!

Any advice - to any or all of the points - gratefully received.

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

Welcome!

Can you tell us which direction the house faces (front/ back)?

What is the boundary at the back like, is it 6ft fence all the way round? Any tall trees or dense hedges?

Any chance of a photo?

Don't despair, I'm sure we can come up with cost-effective ways of improving it

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

It's a bit too late for spring bulbs but summer bulbs are hitting the shops already.

I see even Morrison's are selling them in the florist section.

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

Slugs - slug pellets are discouraged as they're not good for other wildlife, particularly those that eat slugs (birds, hedgehogs etc).
Unfortunately my garden is so overrun with them I have resorted to using the pellets sparingly
Friendlier methods include smashed up egg shells, gravel, beer traps and copper tape around pots.

Not so sure about indoors, I've heard people say that they put a line of table salt across the threshold

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

Although I rate the poundshop for some things, I've found grass seed to be a false economy

The amount they sell really doesn't go far, even for overseeding. The last pack I bought (for a small, bare patch) didn't work, despite my preparation.

I prefer the barrels of seed in Wilkinson. They sell two varieties - you scoop the amount you want into a bag, weigh it and take it to the till.

[funnyperson]

Oh your garden sounds like its going to be brilliant! Do you know if its sunny or shady , north south west or east facing and whether you have acid or alkaline soil or clay sand or what?

Planting along the front: I'm thinking scent will be nice so if it is sunny and well drained, perhaps lavender, thyme, sage, rosemary and for colour some wallflowers and marigolds (calendula), lilies and cyclamen and japanese anemones should do you through to the autumn at least. Perhaps a red rose or two. Most of these are low growing but fine for your first year. Poundland, lild and aldi all do good value plants and bulbs and ebay too and tesco last year was also quite a good cheap place to get stuff.
You dont say how wide your front bed is; you can also fill in gaps with easy annuals like cornflowers and cosmos.
If it is a shady front garden then primulas and foxgloves and lily of the valley and hostas are said to be the thing but you can google 'plants for shade' and choose your own
The back is a bigger deal and here some forethought is better than impulse buying. Get the free catalogues from thompson and morgan and sarah raven and spalding bulbs they will give you ideas about what you want to plant and you may be able to get the stuff cheaper elsewhere. Spalding bulbs is actually quite reasonable. Local markets are also good.
At the end of this month mulch your beds with manure and compost to give the plants you plant in spring a really good start.

[aircooled]

I love your enthusiasm in the face of adversity! Yes, think about your garden's aspect and the sort of plants that will grow. If you do make a border along one side make sure it's deep (absolute minimum 1 metre) and don't plant things too close to the fence - too dry. Just read as much as you can - magazines and websites- Gardeners' World has good practical advice, anything by Monty Don has the more holistic approach (including practical advice!). There will be lots of Spring charity/church sales coming up for cheap plants. Definitely don't use slug pellets. Salt across threshold ok but not pleasant, have had to do it myself.

[PedantMarina]

I'd started a reply, but the phone ate it. Thank you so much for all the nice suggestions! Oh, and I've poked my nose in on the other "newbie" fred somebody started (wish I'd seen it before I started in asking stupid questions ).

Right, will try to give you pictures tomorrow, but basic details are:

Front garden is west-facing, virtually nothing getting in the way of the light there. Almost all of the front is concrete paving (we'll be taking that up and replacing the parking area with pebbles (probably) and the front walk with period tiling, as and when we have the money to. But for now it's hideously ugly. The border on the left-hand side (i.e. the north perimeter) is maybe 12" deep, and could add a spot of colour, but whatever we do has to be temporary this year: DP has a Plan with the wall (it's dreadful concrete and exactly the right height for the chavs to sit on and have their tinnies and smokes, so we'll be building a taller, more period wall from reclaimed brick).

There's a lovely rope-tile edging (in black) to the border - we need to find more of those.

There's also space on the right-hand side of the front (going to the side gate) for a border, so we should do something there, but its not as prominent as the path leading to the front door.

Back garden is east-facing. The 6 ft fence I'd mentioned is along the north perimeter. One large-ish tree at the very bottom (east) end, but it doesn't interfere all day, IYSIM.

I mentioned the back garden is 40' deep, but only about 12' wide - that's because at the moment it's divided (side-to-side) between ours and the upstairs neighbour. We're looking into who actually owns what, and if (as we think) we truly own all the ground, we'll remove the fence between (another 6'er). Bottom line, yes, there can be issues with light but it's not as bad as it sounds.

Oh a bit of good news, I found some snowdrops. I'd like to keep those! More good news (esp given one of the suggestions on the other fred), we do have a few friends who are good gardeners and we can probably even get cuttings.

[aircooled]

This garden could have a thread all to itself as an ongoing project! Look forward to the photos! Hope you get the full width of the back garden.

[florentina1]

I would take advice regarding pebbling drive for car parking. World War three broke out in my mums road by "the mess and the danger" caused by the car tyres spreading the pebbles onto,the pavement. I kid you not. Local council and MP gotInvoved.

[RoganJosh]

We live in a badly slug infested area. I've learnt to try and avoid putting in very small plants. Also some plants seem to not get eaten. Lobelia for example.
I have read that the iron based slug pellets are not toxic to wildlife. I've got some to try this year. They are these (mine were from Amazon)
www.organiccatalogue.com/p1821/ADVANCED-SLUG-KILLER-575g/product_info.html

[PedantMarina]

With apologies for the delay, here are some pictures.

This is the back garden (the bits that are really ours). The fence to the right is the one dividing us from our upstairs neighbour.

As you can see, it dwindles to a point. If we can tear down the fence, we thought the [small] garden shed might go right at the bottom of the garden, where there's not a lot of light anyway.

Photo 2 is the snow-drops!

Photo 3 is one of the [weeds?] I'm wondering about - it has a really thick root!

Generally, you can see it needs a lot of de-weeding, but we're not sure if that's going to be enough to bring up the lawn, or if we should just put plastic over everything to kill everything and then start afresh.

Next post - bits of the front!

[PedantMarina]

Bits of the front. NB - apologies if you're not seeing the "whole picture" - I don't want to go putting my house front on t'interweb.

The first one is the side border, as seen from my front door, including really ugly side wall.

The second one is the pebble stuff around the front window. Not high priority, as long as it's de-weeded, but if anybody has any inspiration, please share.

The third one shows the paving stones down the other side of the front. These will probably be lifted up at some point.

BTW, I've already got bulbs, so no extra expense there! I've got tulips and some freesias. And we've been given a pot of hyacinths which seem to already be sprouting the secondary bulb (baby). Any advice on how to deal with that?

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

Thanks for the photos

I'm not the best at planning, I'm hoping by bumping the the thread you might get some better advice!

Do you have any patio at the back or is it grass all the way to the house? I would suggest a little patio or deck with pots but I don't know whether space permits Do you feel very overlooked, would you like an area to sit out/BBQ?

I can't immediately think what to do with the tapered shape apart from improve the lawn as you've suggested. I imagine the end gets quite shaded.
The shed sounds like a good solution if you were to gain the extra garden. Do you know how soon you might find out about it?

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

The advice for tapered gardens seemingly is to incorporate curves to draw the eye away from the harsh lines.

An example would be to shape the lawn into two diminishing overlapping circles (use lawn edging - Wilko, £4 - to keep the shape) with narrow planting areas surrounding.

The advantage would be that you wouldn't need too many plants (£) to create interest as your flowerbed is limited.

You could potentially paint the fence (and/or shed) a light green or similar (Cuprinol Shades or Wilko version) which would bounce more light in.

Get a few climbers (some evergreen) going as well to break the line of the fence up.

You could incorporate a few decorative orbs to continue the curves theme. You used to see glazed and reflective ones in the garden centre, I don't know whether they're still popular

It's hard to come up with budget solutions A lot of the internet transformations seem to include intensive landscaping and a pot of money!

If you gained the neighbouring garden would it make the plot into a rectangle or would it still be triangular?

[funnyperson]

Create a patio in the sunniest spot, dig up lawn, widen flower beds on the sides, put up wire and vine eyes along the fencing for climbers, when wealthy put up trellis, plant feature tree/shrub at the end and flowers in the beds with climbers such as roses honeysuckle clematis jasmine at the back of the beds growing up the vine eyes and trellis, an get cordon fruit trees too.
Suggest you join gardening thread, watch programmes on iplayer, make a wish list so you know what bargains you want
Looks like you will have London Clay and roses will do well as will lots of other things as the garden is sheltered. Grow some herbs, they will smell nice.

[rhihaf]

Am watching this thread with interest, as we have inherited a similarly uninspiring garden!

DH is just painting the old garage door, and HaveYouSeenHerLately is so right about colour, it really makes a HUGE difference for very little outlay.

Good luck

[HaveYouSeenHerLately]

Hooray! What colour did you go for, rhihaf?

[funnyperson]

I forgot to say lay down turf after digging up lawn dont bother with seed

[funnyperson]

I was thinking about your garden and realised that my rather amateurish advice was all about a cottage garden look
But you have a sheltered garden, probably quite mild temperatures because of the housing, so you may be able to go for a tropical garden jungly look.

Also you can grow fruit: soft fruit, espaliered morello cherries, cordoned pears and apples, etc.