Bees, brambles, husband... which is the problem??

[BornToBeStyled]

Please can you help me figure out an issue I feel that, at 48 years old, I should be able to figure out myself?

Garden extremely overgrown - mainly with brambles, but also any other manner of wild plants. It's truly wild.

So, I realise this is really lovely for the bees and birds. Chuffed about that.

But it's getting harder to sit in, and I don't like the brambles (even if the bees do love the flowers).

Would like to get on top of it ourselves, but it's just not happening (huge amounts on at work, ageing parents, tricky kids, etc). I never get time.

Friend of family looking for work. He's offered to come in and do some bramble clearance. I'm delighted - said yes.

Now husband really upset. Really upset about bees, making me feel like it's immoral and unreasonable to want garden not bordered entirely by metres of brambles (not growing up in lawn too, which is also massively overgrown). And now I'm anxious and upset about the bees, too. Will they die? Can they find somewhere else to go? I know it's a bad time of year to cut back, but it's also just before the summer, when I'd like the kids to be able to use the garden better.

Husband wants us to do "little bits together" (we might have an hour every 2 weeks, I reckon) - just not feasible IMHO (and annoys me when he knows how completely overwhelmed I'm feeling).

Opinions, please?

I was so relieved we decided not to use a strummer at the very last moment the other day, when I pulled up some grass and found the most beautiful little baby skink. I popped him into our really wild area but I felt dreadful and we carefully hand pulled the rest of the over growth away to make sure we could relocate or things could escape.

The RHS have a plant finder page that brilliant for helping pick plants for your garden! They’ve got a option to filter for pollinators friendly plants too!

www.rhs.org.uk/plants/search-form

Just want to thank you all again. This has been really helpful. No strimmers.

I now have the flowerbed down one side (the sunny side) cut down to the ground, so now think I need to dig it over with a fork (to remove roots). And then get in some bee-friendly plants! I'm actually quite excited. Am going to re-read all posts here to inform this....

Thanks again

And I'm actually leaving the lawn and the other side for now. Just have a path down the middle of the lawn (which I didn't have to make myself as the dog has made it on her daily run😂)

Don't bother with buddleia, it will seed everywhere and try to grow on your roof...

Lavender is just as good and stays a reasonable height.

Sorry, yes, a strimmer is unreasonable. We had a hedgehog with a strimmed leg (probably from a verge strim near our home) and tried to save it by going to an animal hospital, but it was a nasty experience and don't know whether successful. Even cutting back using shears, we've also sometimes found more toads than you expect, trying to shelter from hot conditions under plants that block sun.
However, brambles reincarnate so you can practically see growth from the end of a day from its beginning. If you don't believe me, tie a bright string or something round it at soil level and then see the speed that it gets higher. If your husband is sulky about keeping up as a joint effort to keep them in check, then he's going to have to be super committed and very resilient to the fact of nature beating him every few weeks - absolutely get help with open arms, as you will need it.

I forgot to mention another bee friendly plant - borage. It’s a herb and can be used for dishes (the flowers taste like cucumber so are lovely in a salad). When in full flower it looks so pretty. Cheap too. Best to start off in pots.

Bees love our pyracanthus hedge when it flowers each spring. We also found that using the hose to remove something on our patio resulted in many bees drinking the remaining water after the job was done so we now splash water on a paving slab or two a few times a day just for the insects.