To be totally overwhelmed by the garden?

[flyingtartar]

It defeats me every fucking year. Last year, for obvious reasons, I got on top of it and got some pleasure out of it and thought it would be a turning point. This year I started out with good intentions in the Easter break (I'm a teacher) and mowed the lawn and did some weeding and planting. Then it rained solidly for a month.

This morning I have gone out there and it's just awful. The lawn is massive, there are waist high dandelions and other weeds around the edges. These weird things that I think are comfrey (?) are out of control and shrubs that had been cut to stumps are flourishing in an unattractive way. The lavender I planted last year looks good and can just about be seen, the carpet rose I planted is alive but barely identifiable and the hydrangea I planted at Easter is amazingly alive but only visible if you go right up to it.

It doesn't help that I'm really scared of slugs and snails so won't go out unless it's been dry for a few days. Also a big hebe in the front that had been there for a few years had died for some reason so that needs sorting too.

When I go running literally every garden looks tidy and the majority look lovely yet this seems beyond me. I posted on a million sites and a guy is coming round later so hopefully it will be better by tonight and ds1 has decided to dig up the dead thing, but AIBU to think every other person manages to keep on top of this?

I have a young man every fortnight to mow the front and back lawn, and to tidy the front borders. As I like seeing what decides to grow, apart from the lawn, the back garden looks after itself. At the moment; Welsh poppies, bluebells and aquilegia.

If you don't like gardening get a gardener. I don't like cleaning and have a cleaner. I don't like ironing but my husband does so he does it. I cook and garden.

Get yourself a good local gardener. Down here in the South you'd be looking at paying about £20 an hour or thereabouts. £300 sounds quite a lot for a day's work but not so much if it involves taking stuff away.

Ours is quite big and purposefully low maintenance: grass with a few bushes and shrubs around the edges. It gets cut when dh gets around to it (usually when the neighbour does his and they share the job) and then strimmed at the same time. We don't bother with flower beds and borders because we're too lazy and we let the dandelions and daisies etc grow because they're great for the bees and butterflies.

I got a fiskars weed puller this week (oh the excitement) but we de weeded the garden in about 3 hours and no bad backs - its fab!

I love gardening. My main advice is to work with nature. I hate lawns. You will be forever cutting it. Don't fight nature. Look what features you have in your garden and work with that. I have a natural rocky area so we planted alpines. I have a bog garden because my garden dips in the centre like a bowl and water gathers there. So we planted plants that like wet roots. Alot of people forget plants wont just grow anywhere they need the right place. They also decide what type of garden the want and try and force that on it. But perfectly mowed, perfectly tidy gardens take alot of hard work.

We divided the garden into different areas connected by winding paths. Theres an overall cottage garden look. Lots of plants, masses of flowers, slightly overgrown. Plants growing where they like. In the middle of a path rather than neatly in a bed. My garden is beautiful but not perfect. It's a garden designed to welcome nature. I have a patch of nettles because the butterflies love them. The bees love dandilions. So you will see them growing amongst my other flowers.

I do everything I can to attract birds into the garden. They eat the slugs.

I’ve just been trying to put weed killer on the patio. I have six or seven watering cans. Two roses. Neither of which delivers anything like a fine spray. So it just gushed everywhere. I give up. Is there nowhere to buy watering cans that actually work anymore? Has anyone tried those torch contraptions?

I have a tiny little postage stamp of a garden, no lawn (gravel) and a few beds. Previous owner was gardening mad, and stuffed the place to the gills with all manner of hardy shrubs that love to take over. It was like a jungle 2 months ago.

I spent 2 full days hauling up roots, cutting down dead things and then covering the beds with slate chippings. I then salvaged the terracotta pots (and bought a few more) and stuck in some nice flowers and some herbs. Herbs I can see the point of, flowers I can up to a point but I bloody loathe shrubs.

I've just been out weeding, tidying and feeding. It's rather Soviet in its minimalism, but fairly low maintenance. It's not the garden I'd like, but it is finally one I can cope with.

I'm glad you gave up with the weedkiller because it's awful stuff. It not only kills the weeds but it gets into the soil and therefore any other plant that grows there which in turn poisons any insect that feeds from it. If you don't want the weeds, dig them up instead.

For shrubs to flower each year, they usually need to be pruned at the right time and in the right way. Some flower on new growth and some on older parts so if you cut the wrong bits off at the wrong time, or don't cut off the right bits, they won't flower.

I was going to write the same thing. 🤣
I spent all morning weeding and cutting the grass with DH, we only did it 3 weeks ago and it was a jungle again!
Still have the other half of the garden to go and most it is a patio. 🙄

If you garden for wildlife, then it doesn't have to be spick and span. Grow things that spread and ramble and need zero maintenance. Grass doesnt need to look like a bowling green etc

Op everyone’s garden looked like shite by last Thursday. We’ve had three weeks of solid rain and everything was growing like mad. We started the strimming, weeding, cutting back, mowing on Thursday and have pretty much just got it back under control now.

But if you’re not into it. Or don’t have the time, then get someone in to do it. Your gardens not abnormal. Everything grows and when it’s raining heavily it’s not pleasant , and sometimes not possible, to go out and deal with it.

How many people are coming in to do it op?

I’m in the south east, going rate for a gardener is 15-20 pounds an hour.

Is there two of them?

Ours was done on TV (not by us) and now looked so overgrown. Our neighbours probably hate us but I’m slowly sorting it. It’s a massive time commitment, but solidarity as I’m drowning too 😬

I was thinking the same today, the lawn grows so fast. Everything is overgrown.

I have a medium sized garden abs for the first time in the ten years we have lived here am proud of it. It's mainly down to lockdown and doing a lot of clearing and planting.
What I've done is very low maintenance and so far so good:/

• decking area has lots of pots of fairly low maintenance plants- Roses, lavender, wildflower kits from the supermarket
• flower beds round the edges are now growing the wildflowers I planted last year plus a few shrubs, sweet peas etc that I've got obelisks for to hold them up
• small veg patch with strawberries and raspberries
• newly planted apple tree

/ mainly lawn I potter around every evening when it's dry for about ten minutes of weeding but left it to its own devices over winter A bit of wildness is good for the bees and butterflies so I don't mind if it's not perfect

I feel exactly the same. Our garden is big and unmanageable. We started to get it under control last year but its ridiculous again now. We do have a man who comes and cuts the grass once a fortnight for £25 and this really makes everything look a million times better. He didn't turn up last time so it's been a month since it was done and it was starting to look horrendous again but he came yesterday. I think £25 is OK apart from the time he didn't cut the back grass because DH was busy doing something round there, DH said to come to the door for his money, I didn't realise he hadn't cut the back grass and he still asked for £25, cheeky git!

I don't judge people who have messy gardens. It's good for the wildlife. And overgrown is better than concrete or plastic grass. But I do appreciate you are probably sick of it.
Hope that bloke sorts it out today, it's been a weird spring which hasn't helped.

I agree overgrown is better for wildlife.

My garden is very big. A good third of it was just bare soil when we bought the house. The rest of it was a broken, weedy crazy paved path around it.
We covered the whole lot in weed mat, on top of which we put bark on top on the soil area and gravel on top on the crazy paved area.
Functional and zero maintenance.

It’s rained for the last twenty weeks, so I’ve only got onto the weekend for the first time in ages. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Can you buy a couple of pots and plant up some bedding plants for instant colour? I have mine in strategic points, ie, in view of kitchen window.

@CCSS15

I got a fiskars weed puller this week (oh the excitement) but we de weeded the garden in about 3 hours and no bad backs - its fab!

Off to Google weed pullers...

YANBU it's the reason I pay a gardener I have no interest in gardening or the garden so only really venture out there to put out the laundry. Gardener coming fortnightly or weekly peak season means that at least when I venture in there it's always neat and tidy.

I feel your pain. Bought a house last year which came with a large garden which had been lovingly tended by the previous owner for 50 years. I clearly didn't think this through properly and right now the garden is my life (on top of a f/t job, a business and 2 kids)

There's 2 massive conifer hedges, long, long beech hedge, 21,357 shrubs, veg patch, more shrubs, borders, flower beds, FOUR lawns (which I lifted 50kg of moss from last month), shrubs, rose bed, 15' espaliered apple plus 3 other apple trees. And did I mention the shrubs? 🌲🌿🌳🪴🌲

DP doesn't help much, but refuses to pay for help so it's pretty much just me doing it!

I swing between loving it and wanting to cry as I get so overwhelmed

I let mine get overgrown on purpose, it's better for the wildlife, I don't give a shit what the neighbours think, it's not their garden.
I had a swarm of bees last year and the beekeeper who came to get them said he only mows twice a year.