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

It’s not always as easy as chucking some seeds down. I just googled ‘low maintenance plants for clay soil’ and the RHS website told me I needed to do a lot of work improving the soil (which sounded expensive as well as time consuming) before I started planting anything. It’s also north facing, so low on light in some parts.

We have tried over the years. We have a handful of hebes still going. But most other things die. We had a wildflower patch for a while, but it was soon taken over by nettles and grass. Any fruit and vegetables we plant get eaten by the slugs and squirrels (and possibly rats as we live next to water). The compost attracted rats, so we stopped that. No room for a greenhouse.

My neighbour’s garden is admittedly lovely. But he is retired and has tended it for the past 20 years. When I do garden, I last about 30 mins before my back and knees start to hurt. And I get dirty and sweaty. It is not a pleasurable activity. So we focus on maintenance.

And I grew up helping family tend their gardens and was dragged around garden centres every weekend. So I can name a decent number of plants, know how to look after seedlings and take cuttings. But I don’t have the time, inclination, and frankly skill for our type of garden.

@Nameychangington its not a competition though. Your grandmother was well enough to work, juggle kids, mum and a sick husband. Check her privilege - other women aren't well enough to physically manage that. And she had a council flat, which according to some would be a massive privilege.

People will be defensive when they're being attacked, yes.

The usual MN problem is creeping up.
It's not all or nothing. It's not paving or Royal show off garden. It's noy spending 0 or 1000s. It's not several hours vs nothing. There is so much inbetween (as with everything).
Literally just planting few flowering shrubs makes difference. That's what most people doing it seem to mean. You can even get buddleia for free like I did from a cutting I got by the trainstation😂

Also, it's not "the poors" who are astroturfing...

There doesn’t need to be any type of bashing on how others live their lives.
The OP and quite a few others make very interesting and valid points re gardens though.
The artificial grass shite and paving is highly indicative of how people are living, how they are feeling etc.
But many are waking up to what nature can do. Have any of you seen green roofs on bus shelters now?
Lots more trees in city centres?
It helps with cooling down cities in the summers.
I bet a few of you have heard of ShinrinYoku……Japanese for ‘Forest Bathing’.
It is scientifically proven that spending time with plants and or nature have huge health benefits. The air you breathe is beneficial and healthier.
It doesn’t take much. Even I’m surprised how my garden is turning out and how it makes me feel. I do see people out walking with their dogs, or with their kiddies stop and look for a few seconds at my flowers. That’s amazing!
If people like myself can stop people, and we all know how bloody awful life can be at times, then it’s worth it.

I contacted my local beekerper's association and they pointed out that because removing brickwork and floors was involved, no one was insured to do this. I ended up finding a pest control group that also did live bee removals, so went for those. Even they got stung loads and mentioned how aggressive that hive was.

Not everyone's lives are the same, not everyone's priorities are the same. OP and some PP don't seem to understand that.

Of course they do. What is hard to understand is the wide scale decline in gardens when it's actually quite important and useful thing both on a individual and societal level. All those grey paved/concreted/Astro turfed fronts add up.
Being poor in 70', 80's and 90's wasn't an easier sort of poor than now.

@JandamiHash
I'm disabled myself. I have a neurological condition that affects my mobility. I can't bend to dig so we have low maintenance garden filled with trees and shrubs.
We put decaying logs underneath the trees to make a bit of a haven for insects, small mammals and give the baby birds a place to be safe from predators.

Having a wildlife friendly garden doesn't have to mean hard work. I don't go out digging because I physically can't with my spinal problems, but our garden is filled with life. It doesn't need a lot of maintenance. Most of the time you just leave it be and nature does its wonderful thing.

I love to see a nice garden, a nicely mowed lawn, nice borders, hundreds and hundreds of flowers - especially sunflowers, etc, and it would be nice if every garden could have all this, especially for the bees and the butterflies and the wildlife and the environment. So I get where you're coming from @Lovelybitofsquirrel3

But quite honestly, gardening is hard work, and not everybody's cup of tea, not even a small amount. We've got a big(ish) corner plot, a third of an acre, and I'm always planting lots of flowers, and making the garden look nice ... It's got bushes and hedges and heathers and hebes and little corners for the birds, and hedgehog houses, and little wild areas (for the wildlife obvs!) and lots of flower borders, and 3 lawns... I absolutely love my garden - and it's my main hobby. But to be honest, it is hard work/high maintenance.

Between March and October. I very rarely have more than two or three days out of the garden in any given week. I work part time from home couple of days a week, so have time for the garden. 90% of the time I love it, but about 10% of the time I just think 'man, this is such hard work!' I sometimes feel like I wanna concrete over it. (Don't worry, I won't!!! )

We have got about 20 houses in the road and only 5 us actually have lots of flowers and make a big effort with the garden. Although about another 20 houses in the other 100-ish houses in the village have beautiful well maintained 'flowery' gardens. It's mostly semi retired or retired people, (who make a huge effort with their garden,) because quite honestly, as quite a number of posters have said - it's really time consuming and really hard work, and they don't have time.

My husband doesn't do anything in the garden. He actually loathes gardening and I do it all (pretty much,) but that's because I absolutely love it. My dad loved gardening and my grandad did too, and I think I get it from them.

So I do get you - but also it is hard work, and time consuming and I get why some people don't do it. Even a smallish amount of turning the soil and weeding and planting is too much effort for some people, because they genuinely do not want to do it. And that's their right to be fair.

I can honestly say when I worked 3 or 4 days a week and had 2 children at home, I didn't do a quarter of the stuff in the garden I do now ... Although I did use to plant sunflowers and put some nice flowerbeds in. We had a much smaller garden then though, so it was much less maintenance/hard work.

Oh, and like some others here, I LOATHE artificial grass, and think it should be banned! 😬 Hideous stuff. bad for the environment, and looks shite (and fake!)

My grandmother lived in a council flat with a sick husband, 4 kids and her own mother, she worked as a cleaner in a hospital and looked after her two sisters 6 kids while they went to work. She did not have 'a nice house with a presentable garden'. She also would have had no understanding of lifestyle choices, priorities or aspirations. Check your privilege (and possibly your grandmother's privilege while you're at it)

Presumably she didn’t work. 8 hours extra a day is a lot

Also there’s a lot of generational trauma because people had WAY too many kids and older siblings needed up bringing them up. I don’t think that’s a better life personally.

So people who don’t have busy gardens are <checks notes> soulless and miserable?

Personally I think people who make bonkers judgements of others on MN based on their taste are soulless and miserable but each to their own

I’d never have plastic grass though because it looks shit IMO. And you apparently have too hoover it. Fuck that noise.

I also really don’t wanna keep waffling on about my DS’s disability but to paint a picture of my life, he has good spells and bad spells - during the bad spells, there’s lots of pain, hospitals stays, visits to the doctor, managing pain and medication. This means sitting with him for hours cuddling him, making sure he has what he needs, making sure he isn’t experiencing hospital-trip worthy symptoms or just, and this is awful to say, waiting until he’s tired enough to fall asleep so he can stop being in agony and we can all get some rest. I also have a preteen DD who is healthy but has her own emotional needs. I’m REALLY conscious that her childhood isn’t defined as “Parents never paid attention to me because my brother is ill”. So DH and I make a pretty good job of tag teaming to make sure she’s ok and we are spending time with her.

Now not all our days are like this. We often have good spells where he lives like a perfectly healthy child. But we can never tell when it’s going to turn. He’s having a good spell at the moment but it could change any minute. The climate makes no difference either - he’s as likely to have a bad period in the summer as he is in the winter

With this kind of life we have to be very selective about our commitments and hobbies. I’d LOVE to volunteer for the PTA for example, or a local group (dream volunteering is being a magistrate, hopefully one day) but it would be very unfair to commit my time to anything when there’s a likely chance of be forever cancelling things.

So I don’t feel I could commit to even a small section of the garden, because inevitably I wouldn’t be able to look after it properly.

I think this is one of the most miserable threads I've ever seen on here. I think people's gardens are indicative of what's going on in their minds, and soulless and depressing about sums it up. Concrete and plastic grass, no wildlife. Endless excuses for not even shoving a little ornamental cherry tree or a few shrubs in. Don't people like to see and hear birds at least? I expect they hate them because they crap and sing early in the morning. The more detached from nature we are, the more miserable we are.

Oh well, enjoy the dead, barren, concreted future.

I'm still not understanding the "less time" thing.

Our grandmother's generation had kids and jobs but no car, had to use the bus and still had a nice house with a presentable garden... How did someone with 8 kids have "more time" back then...🤔

It's a lifestyle choice. It's priorities and aspirations.

I'd also recommend yarrow, seems to be quite hard-wearing and stays green in our garden even in very dry weather. Spreads itself well too.

And camomile is lush to walk on barefoot.

There’s no simple solution.
People are bloody knackered. Cost is another thing. It can seem to be another chore to add to their lists.
i’m lucky. I work part time. My other half works full time. I have a tiny house. It needs so much doing to it. Can’t afford to get new doors and windows, etc, but I find getting into the garden helps my mental and physical health.
Work life is not a bed of roses either.
You are not really saving an awful lot of money by growing your own veg, but yes, it’s infinitely better for you and the environment.
Also the thing regarding food security.
I built a massive raised bed in my garden during the covid shite, and it’s amazing what I can grow. Garlic is amazing. Strawberries. Potatoes. Spring onions. Lettuces. Spinach. Rocket. Wild flowers galore.
I’ve planted a plum tree, got some plums, not a lot, but that’s gardening for you. Got wild raspberries……they grow all over Scotland.
Christ, I’m no Monty Don, I’ve got too many sodding slugs.
I live on the edge of a town. I have hedgehogs visiting. Field mice. Toads. Sparrowhawks, all sorts of little birds. Last spring was horribly wet. I do get a lot of bees….some bumble bees nest in my garden.
Paving over a garden and adding artificial grass is setting a very dangerous precedent. Especially with regards to flooding, environmental impact, and biodiversity.
I do genuinely believe if we could get more people interested in gardening or just wild flower growing, we might, just might be able to build communities a bit more.
Nature is perfect as it is. It holds a lot of answers. But the pressure on people, not just in the U.K., is huge. Priorities. And blocking out a lot of noise on SM/TikTok etc.
Yes, it can be a bit disheartening to see unkempt and uncared for gardens. But a little bit of imagination and a little time can make for smiles through our gardens.

Nope. It’s peaceful and I enjoy the quiet. I enjoy even more the absolute bare minimum effort and maintenance. I don’t mind cutting the grass as I can listen to an audiobook but I’ve no interest or time in doing any more maintenance than that.

My life has a lot going on. It would be incredibly foolish to make it even harder by adding a time and money guzzling hobbie to it

Pollinating insects are declining anyway, which is obviously dreadful. But no, it's not that easy for people on low incomes or with a disability, which is probably more common on a council estate.

Do what I do and create and throw wild flower 'seed bombs' around the area.

Is it not soulless and depressing? Do you not long for birdsong and a bit of wildlife?

I had a bees nest in my brickwork once and I put a FB post on a local group- people were chomping at the bit to collect it for free! A beekeeper travelled from 40 miles away to remove it, and add to his collection.

You’d think someone who is trying to push people to spend time on their gardens would be aware that potatoes don’t require pollinators.

Strikes me this is just another attack on the poors.

You can, but PP was saying that it's easy and cheap to pop to B&Q and buy a shrub and my point was, it isn't for everyone. Not everyone's lives are the same, not everyone's priorities are the same. OP and some PP don't seem to understand that.

There's a world between fancy high maintenance gardens and plastic grass and concrete. There's a world between people who have time but can't be arsed and people who'd ideally like to have a nice garden but don't have time or resources. The OP and some PP don't seem to be able to grasp that not having their idea of a good garden isn't a moral failing, or a simple 'just pop here and do this!' fix.

It’s well research that people do have less time now.

But I think tastes have changed. I said in an earlier post that 80’s and 90’s gardens were overflowing with plants, whereas people in general gravitate towards the sterile and minimalist look these days both in their houses and in their gardens.