To think people can make more of an effort with their gardens

Absolutely, Like so many people, I have some older male relatives of whom I am fond, and who play golf as a way of keeping mentally and physically active. But golf is just horrible from a sustainability point of view, for all the reasons you say.

I have "weeds" (aka californian poppies) slightly over growing the very wide front footpath around here.
The conflab the council work team had over whether to allow them to stay was mental. They eventually decided they were OK as they weren't in the way. I am the only person in the street with flowers in their front garden, it's proper depressing.

I also told the council they weren't to spray weedkiller around my boundaries. I am one of those people and I don't care. I'm not allowing nettles and foxgloves to go rogue for heavens sake.

People don't want to live in dense cities though unfortunately. Its all well and good if you're starting from scratch and can create beautiful clean areas with lots of shared space and excellent infrastructure etc. In reality dense urban living is a very different picture. They do have some beautiful estates on the continent with green roofing and vertical gardening. Some of the apartment blocks even have trees etc on the large balconies. But this needs to be designed into the structure in most cases.

We need to mandate solar panels, battery storage, EV charging, super insulation green roofing, heat pumps, water permeable surfaces (patios and driveways) and rainwater harvesting on all new builds. Retrofitting isn't realistic for most of this and most of our housing stock is old. Then hopefully we will get closer to improving our environment and the cost of running our homes will start to come down.

It would be lovely if people focussed more on their gardens but it can be a lot of work and even those lucky enough to have the space are often time poor. Having said that, for those who can afford it you can make a massive difference to your space and help the wildlife just by adding a few flowering shrubs which, once put into the ground, really don't need anything more doing to them.

The sharing of garden space is a lovely idea in theory (those with space they are not able to use let others garden there) but fraught with difficulty in reality over security and ownership issues.

@GreenTeaLikesMe - Golf courses are the work of the devil, and it's possibly the lawn-work that for many people is the 'root' (see what I did there?) of perception of gardening as housework. Trying to emulate the green desert of the putting green became the epitome of the English suburban garden, it is labour intensive and boring - but looks 'neat'.

Honestly, though, trying to improve the UK's poor wildlife status through gardening feels like pissing in the wind. If we were serious about all this, we'd be densifying cities and rewilding the areas around cities, especially depopulating settlements, golf courses, pheasant-raising areas and most sheep farming. Most of the UK was originally covered in forest; the popular image of "natural England" ("green fields nibbled by sheep and surrounded by a bit of hedgerow," basically) is actually highly artificial and is not what the landscape would naturally look like at all.

The "weeds" are probably quite good for wildlife though. They just look shit and weed-laden urban landscapes may invite anti social behavior (I will admit I don't know the actual evidence/data on that one, of course).

Probably there is a need in this discussion to clarify what the aims and purposes of "garden-doing" should be: is it about enabling pollinators or making urban spaces look tidier? Not necessarily the same thing.

As others mentioned up thread, a lot of council houses (and ex council houses) have these giant gardens as it was assumed stay at home mothers would grow a lot of the family's food. The whole "back to the land/gardern suburb" 20th century vision. Fewer people have the time or inclination now, of course, so the gardens just sit there.

No idea how to change the situation though. Maybe Switzerland fining people has got it right?

or be like our Parish Council. They got in touch with properties in the area that had very overgrown hedges and waist- high weeds growing on the pavements out side their property and asked them to try and keep the pavements clear for the local residents. It seems to have worked, it's a lot tidier round the village now.

Thank you for the clover mix tip… I’m looking that up now…

Yup. All of this.

This house near where mum lives has a gorgeous garden- but they have professional gardeners visit now.
As kids we used to call this house the ''haunted house'', but now it looks better maintained.
Professional gardeners tend to do the heavy work, cutting down pyracantha, {Nature's own barbed wire} In summer it's lovely walking down this road to see the gardens- this time of year there isn't much to see.

There is quite a few things people can do for a low maintenance garden. Plant small trees they barely need looking after. I have two trees I don't need to anything to do, maybe a feed now and again as one is an sango kaku acer tree but that's it. And I don't have a big garden before anyone says they don't have space for trees, lot and lots of small trees you can have and they can be grown in pots.

Well it does need watering if it's particularly hot but come on that's like a 5min job at most.

Good for you to put time and effort in to your garden- even a tiny garden can become a haven for wildlife and bees - especially if you have a small pond {no fish is best for a wildlife pond} Dragonflies and water skaters appear, and toads or frogs.

Yes I could but busy doing other stuff. Will get round to it eventually.

Not everyone has much time.

Even though my garden is all concrete so I can't really do much out there and I don't enjoy gardening? Is it still good for my MH?

Incidentally I do have some weeds growing over at the side of my garden thanks to next door not doing anything (they grow over from his side). My garden is full of bees. So they clearly like whatever he and I are not doing.

Their houses reflect this too. When you look at property on Right Move or wherever (as we do), the soulless gardens devoid of life almost always belong to equally soulless houses. Grey interiors, exactly the same tiled wet room, gadgets everywhere and not a single book in sight. Show homes with no character, all brand new kitchens that look as if nobody has ever cooked anything in them.
This seems to be the future and it is horribly depressing.

Not really what I was saying. I’m sorry that you don’t have access to that. The vast majority of my neighbours do…but they want nice easy gardens to park their posh cars on. And not a bee in sight in their gardens.

I'm retired and enjoy pottering in my garden now. When I was working full time and had a family at home I didn't have the time, money or inclination for gardening. YABU just focus on making your own garden pretty.

Because people cannot be bothered basically.

Nope, PP stated that our grandmothers had loads more children and less conveniences and still had a nice house and presentable garden. I was pointing out that not all of our grandmothers had those things, my grandmother did not have a nice house, she had an overcrowded flat, and she did not have a presentable garden, she had no garden of any sort.

And no she was not 'well enough' to do those things, she had no option but to do them, and you've no idea of the toll it took on her or the life she led. Just like the 'just buy and plant a few trees!' crowd on this thread have no idea of the lives some of the people who don't do that, are living.

I know right! I didn't know whether to be amused by it, or angry. Truth be told I felt a mix of the two! 😆

@SabreIsMyFave some EXTREME Cheeky F#%*ery going on there! Flamin Nora……😂

This is how I came to gardening. In the 1980s, my grandad was given a prize cup by the Council for the best front garden in one of their houses - he was a machine setter, full-time heavy work, but had chickens, grew veg in his back garden and flowers in the front.

Those of you who might be assuming that gardening needs to look like a Chelsea show garden and requires loads of equipment - it really doesn't (I blame Alan Titchmarsh for this assumption). I get that for some people it's 'housework', but I see weeds growing through pavers and fake grass more than I do in my full on planted garden - or perhaps I am more tolerant of them there!

For full disclosure, I am a passionate amateur gardener, and a member of the RHS. Locally, the front of my house has earned me the name 'the garden lady' and although I am early 50s now, I have been doing this since I was a skint student. It is lovely to see people from my kitchen window stop, look, point, and if I am outside, I get to talk to people and if I can, offer them things they admire (I've given people seed heads and flowers for wedding arrangements, poppy seed heads to small children to grow their own flowers, extras of things that have spread or seedlings I have no space for. Friends and neighbours also get cucumbers and tomatoes when I have a glut. Also, I am lucky, I own a front and back garden, but they are MUCH smaller than any of my grandparents had in council houses.

Gardeners tend to be a generous bunch - with both plants and advice, you will probably find a plant swap for free group in most areas, this has the advantage that they will be plants that thrive in your local conditions, - and if they don't, hey, they were free! There are lots of examples of people transforming back-alleys/ginnels, and abandonned patches with minimal resources to draw inspiration from.

Yeah, I think it would be lovely, as I said, if everybody had a wonderful, glorious, flowery, tree-filled garden. But I genuinely know it's hard work. My next door neighbour does absolutely nothing in her garden. She even pays somebody to mow her lawn - cos she absolutely hates gardening.

Her garden's about 40% of the size of mine, as she isn't on a corner plot... She said to me, if she could snap her fingers and make her garden exactly like mine in the blink of an eye she would. She genuinely wants the garden to look really lovely and really nice. (I think a lot of people would like that.) But it's just so much effort, and time consuming and costly. It's a massive chore for some.

It's not cheap either, to fill my garden with tons of flowers and bushes and hebes. It's hard work and quite expensive. (I do love it and it is my main hobby but I get why other people don't do it.) Whilst I agree I don't want to have a soulless, barren future in our country - gardening is actually hard work. It's not just done in 5 minutes. And if you want to pay somebody to do it, it costs a bloody fortune. Landscaping. Have you ever priced it up? It costs LOADS! 😬

I have actually had people walk past me many times and say 'oh lovely garden, can you come and do mine?' haha LOL! How about NO. One neighbour was actually serious once.. Well their parents actually. A youngish couple 2 doors down have their parents visit every few weeks. One day Hannah's parents came up to me - and her dad said said 'feel free to do Hannah and Ryan's weeding when you're got 5 minutes, and mow the lawn for them.' 'We can see you love your gardening. They're no gardeners! They'd appreciate it.' This was no 'can you do mine next?' banter. They were serious.

Fucking borderline retired woman trying to maintain a huge corner plot, and the cheeky fuckers want me to do their Millennial son and daughter-in-law's garden for them. LOL fuck off. I half laughed and said 'ooh sorry no - this garden is hard enough work as it is! I love it but would struggle to take on any other gardening work...'

Then I went next door but one shortly after and presented them with a card I'd had dropped through my letterbox 'Dave's gardening services... weeding, lawn-mowing, and other light gardening duties.' SHE (Hannah) said 'I'm not paying anyone to do it!' She looked aghast. I thought 'noooo but you don't wanna do it yourself, you want someone to do it FOR you. Her dad comes around every couple of weeks during the summer to tend to' the garden for them. Cheeky bastards! 😆

I don't know if Hannah or Ryan had asked the dad to ask me, but they must have said something like 'I wonder if she will do our garden, as she appears to enjoy gardening?!' Yeah I do. But only my OWN garden. Like I love my home and I'm quite happy to tidy it and keep it clean, and I'm quite happy to cook meals for my own husband and myself. and I was more than happy to look after my own children. But I don't want to clean other people's houses, cook for other people's husbands, and spend my time looking after other people's children. Good grief! 😆

.

I’m very pleased you can enjoying gardening @ScouserInExile despite your disability, it’s always nice to hear things like this. Makes me less worried for DS’s future

Ours is designed to be wildlife friendly and suitable for sporadic (when we're able) upkeep rather than very frequent too. The pond (tiny) that we dug in and lined with a bit of old carpet and a liner offcut from a neighbour is thriving with frogs and visiting bugs and birds. Most of our plants come from bits other people have put on our community WhatsApp as being got rid of, and I mostly use hands and a big kitchen spoon to plant with! It makes me happy watching passersby stop out side the garden and point out something to their kids.