If your garden is messy, do you still sit in it and enjoy it?

No. I love my garden, it’s a thing of beauty and I have planned every inch to make it beautiful, useful, supportive of wildlife, scented, productive, sociable, relaxing and a retreat. It took me years to achieve it, I love how my family use and appreciate it every day and I am very, very fortunate to have it. It is therapeutic, life enhancing and maintaining it brings me joy. Crucially, I designed it to be low maintenance which helps too.

No.

Dh cut so much hedge back a couple of weeks ago that he couldn't fit it all in our council collection bin. He bagged up the rest into ton bags and covered them with a tarpaulin to keep them dry ready to put in the correct bin on the next collection.

He tried to move the pile yesterday and discovered that loads of slow worms, some in a ball look like babies had moved in so that pile is going nowhere for a while.

We stillwater in the garden today, and plan to use it in the summer when guests come. They'll have to put up with it.

If you don't keep the lawn down, then they become a nightmare to cut. When it grown so long it would take much more effort and time to cut.

That’s a gorgeous lawn! I sit in my garden and it’s much worse than that. I have pockets of loveliness.

I’m too paranoid about ticks to leave the grass long!

Our garden is always a work in progress. It's one of those places that when you do a simple trim, the fallout just becomes a big problem as it's difficult to remove. It's a hillside. An effort to just walk up it. Any project results in stuff, and that can appear to be mess. But there's usually somewhere to perch or stand and listen to the birds. So I don't much care. Everyone who visits comments that I need to do this and that, and tidy. And I totally agree. I do. But you know it all takes energy and it requires getting to a certain goal before it all falls into place. Regrettably it can't be enjoyed leisurely very easily. One thing I do note is that I love all that surge in growth in Spring. I mean it's better than when it was bare and wintered. It does eventually all die back, so you can do as much or as little as you like. I tend to find hacked gardens far more ugly than wild ones. Late summer is more depressing when the greens turn to browns and the trees just can't be bothered. I have neighbours that have butchered all their interesting plants and think a bonfire and a pressure wash is a tidy.

Yes of course 😂 Neither my house nor my garden are ever perfectly tidy. If I want to sit I'll sit, I'm not a martyr to housework.

I love gardening so there are seed trays and pots of things all over the place. Cleaning the patio is low on my list of priorities when I need to pot all my seedlings on and plant out the stuff I've been growing.

No. My lawn needs mowing and I won't sit out there til it's done!

I think gardens are like houses.

Shabby chic can be quite enchanting in the large garden of a nice home in a pleasant area if the basics are taken care of. So a patio that isn't in disrepair, a fence that isn't falling apart with panels missing. No broke furniture slung outside etc. Grass that's a little too long and a few unpruned bushes is fine.

But if it's a tiny garden attached to a house which needs work with broken patio stones and an old washing machine, then it's not so charming.

It's the same with houses, a large Victorian house with decent flooring, walls and furniture can cope with a bit of shabby chic. A council flat with peeling lino and scuffed skirting board really can't.

Some might say our garden is overgrown - our grandkids call it "the jungle". But I love the green, I hate to see bare earth and bare fences. So we have ivy, golden hops, honeysuckle and other climbers slugging it out over all the fences and up the pergola (which helps with the privacy aspect) and very densely planted shrubs, perennials and annuals in the flowerbeds. It's only a small garden, but this kind of planting means there is little if any weeding and lots of cutting back. Since I hate weeding and love cutting stuff, this suits me just fine. And best of all, it doesn't take much time to do, so I can get back to the gardening I am best at. The kind that is done on a sun bed with a glass of something cool in my hand.

I have a garden-ish. Its not landscaped, that would look ridiculous TBH. Pots, slate waste, slate patio using slabs i found, somewhere to sit.

but im rural and don’t really need a garden. I have greenery all around.

Mines a jungle. A massive mainly badly paved jungle and it has weeds and grass coming up every crack. The wildlife have reclaimed it. I keep the bit nearest the house cleared and swept and just throw an outdoor rug and some pillows out and chill in it every day.

I also spend 10mins in morning and 10/15 in evening just playing with one bit and working my way round the garden. I do it whilst having a brew break. Looks better for it and I feel better. Progress not perfection and all that.

And this is where so many people get it wrong, you don’t need to leave it “untidy” , it’s about the right plants, in the right place, managed correctly. Leaving it “untidy’ Is simply the lazy way.

Love the garden after a good mow. Makes 80% difference. Also have a paddock intentionally left natural. My chickens love it in this field and I put my sunchair in here.

No. And I'm incredibly irritable when the house is a mess, too.

Even when my garden was tidy, I had wild sections. Don't think the neighbours approved.

Yes, I do.
I don't cut my grass, it's kept at about calf height by people walking on it, hanging out washing etc. I have clover, chamomile, self heal, ladies smock and all sorts growing through it. My borders are wild and I have all sorts of things that I have never planted -2 ash trees, a goat willow, cottoneaster, evening primrose, Melissa, all sorts of wildflowers that have just sprung up. I let my bird food grow where it drops on the ground.
I love it. My tiny garden is bursting with life. The birds, bees, butterflies, moths, voles, beasties and even frogs it attracts are so much better than close cropped grass and soulless, structured borders weeded to within an inch of their lives.

I can’t see any sort of mess or untidiness in the garden or my home and sit and enjoy it. It nags at me to sort it out until everything is just right. Being disabled makes this very hard but it is essential to my peace of mind.
Part of my OCD diagnosis but I would add that not everybody who is very tidy has ocd and the term is frequently misused.
In a way I envy people who can feel more relaxed about things.

My garden is messy. Too embarrassed to sit out. DH died three years ago. State of the garden is down to a combination of physical ill health and bereavement depression.

Had a shoulder decompression about a year ago. Starting to get back to physical stuff, but my knees are shot and the consultant says they'll not consider a replacement for at least another 10 years. I'll be 74 by then, if I'm still here.

I'm trying to do a bit at a time in the hope that I'll have a section I can sit in.

I've been concentrating on the front and thinking that I could sit on the verandah and read a book, but I've realised that I have issues to deal with round the back: in the space of one month, the greenhouse has been overtaken by a bramble. I've chopped it up and applied glyphosate, but I need to try to get to the roots.

Realised that the padlock on the back gate wouldn't open - I wanted to clear my section of the common path. (It's not bad - I'm one of the few folk who takes care of my own section.) WD40 didn't work. Boltcutters wouldn't get through the padlock. Had to cut the ruddy hasp, so now I have that to replace.

At least I can get out the gate now. Have found a length of chain and another padlock as a stopgap.

I'm a keen gardener so mine is tidy all the time because I'm out there all year round, I've been addicted since I was knee-high to a grasshopper but it isn't a source of judgement to me if people choose a wild garden. People have demands on their time and budget, everyone's different including their priorities for gardening.

It really doesn't matter, the insects and bird couldn't care less as long as you keep a source of clean water for them most days and there's diversity and pollen-friendly plants. Even though we keep the grass short, our garden attracts loads of pollinators, hedgehogs, squirrels, bats, sodding slugs .

This time of year birds have plenty of food but in the winter I put seeds and fatballs out there on the bird feeder and stand at the kitchen window watching them.

we have our dinner in the garden every evening, when it's warm and dry, but at the weekend, I don't sit down in the day, apart from a quick cuppa - I'd find myself listing out the gardening jobs I need to do!

My patio doors are broken and not being replaced until next week.
I've not been able to get out in my back garden since last year because I have no back gate.
The grass is above the knee and looks unsightly.
Once my new patio doors are fitted I will cut my grass straight away because I can't bare sitting in a messy long grassed garden.
It feels dirty and even more bugs

@Myblindsaredown of course you are right, bees and insects will love any flowers. However wildlife gardening isn't necessarily about just feeding pollinators but providing very niche habitats for native species, leaving areas of the garden untidy suchas leaving stems of plants for some species of bees to lay eggs in instead of tidying them away etc. Increasing biodiversity richness often improves the populations of insects less noticed like different species of moths that you miss as they only come out at night.

I'm gardening for wildlife this year, cut the grass in March and will do the hay cut at end of August, it's very meadowy sorrel is 5ft high, ox eye daisies 4ft as is the knap weed and poppies. I have a path to sit by the wildlife pond but other than let leaving it to it's own devices.

DD is a teen and no real interest in the garden, we've had years of short grass, climbing frames and trampolines in the past and they've all gone now. I go out and eat my lunch by the pond most days in summer if the weather allows as WFH and a cup of tea in the evening otherwise it rarely gets used so seemed daft to keep cutting it when it could be beneficial to wildlife .