To be sick of my garden, weeds, cat shit and no help from DP

[Scaredycat259]

As the title says really.
This afternoon I've got sick of seeing an overgrown lawn and sprayed as much as I can with extra strong weedkiller.
It hasn't been mown since last year.
Both front, back garden and driveway are desperately in need of a total revamp.
This is all on me, DP will begrudgingly mow the lawns once every blue moon.
I just don't have the time to take care of it all, the washing, ironing, cleaning, looking after toddler and work 3 days a week.
There's cats shitting everywhere, uneven flags, steps into back garden from the side, 2 stupid triangular patches of flower bed in the back garden, a row of flags between, oh and the back garden is also triangular.
There's no safe place for toddler to play, have a padding pool, ride a bike, kick a ball about. Nowhere for us to sit out in summer due to the ever present fragrance of hidden catshit.
I'm just so done with it.
Tell me I'm not unreasonable to want to blow the whole garden up!

Well if you blow the garden up the cat shit will go everywhere. Do you have funds available to have it cleared to a point you can start again a little easier?

Two questions:

Why isn't your DP stepping up here and could you afford a gardener to give it a good sort out, then you can both keep on top of it?

I think you should blow your P up with the garden, lazy arsehole, and I am speaking from bitter experience I'm afraid.

Either he can be a dad to his toddler while you're sorting out the garden, or he can pay for someone to do it. Make sure to have a patio....

Why are you doing all the washing, cleaning, ironing and looking after your child? What's he doing? Kick him to the kerb. He isn't going to get any better I'm afraid.

Oh forgot to say, 2 fence panels round the back blew down at christmas, they're still there, laid flat where they landed in the back garden 🙄

Get yourself a shotgun automatic sprinkler to try to stop the cats from pooing in your garden. We have a real problem with cat poo and I just hate them with a passion.

Sack off the ironing, or save ironing for the few key items that could benefit from being ironed. Go out and collect as much poo as you can, and throw it away. Finally, get your toddler to help you mow the grass. Do it every week or fortnight. It'll make such a difference to your life to have a usable outside space.

Finally, march your DP outside and tell him it's his turn to mow the lawn (every weekend).

Do you have wooden or concrete fence posts? If you have the funds and they're wooden, use some Postcrete to put in new fence posts and attach a new fence panel.

If they're concrete then could you just buy new panels and slot them in?

We need concrete boards tbh, it's so windy here we keep having to replace the panels

Please hire gardener for starters to get on top of it.THEY WILL GIVE YOU GOOD IDEAS TOO...DONT GIVE UP.A NICE GARDEN IS ESSENTIAL FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES.

Can you pay someone to sort it out?

oh dear... i assume the garden wasn't part of the package when you got the house? did it get delivered afterwards??

it sounds like neither of you are bothered about it.. so just hire someone, either a proper landscape gardener or put an add on the local facebook groups, maybe a retired person might love a garden to potter about it.

and to be fair, the weed killer is going to wreck the lawn anyway...

It hasn't been mown since last year.

How high is the grass???

Consider an artificial lawn. People look down on them but they don't require water, are easy to clean and cats don't like toileting on them. You can add a few easy potted plants if you like.

I pay a gardener £18 a time to mow our lawn and do some weeding. We have a large lawn and have no time to mow it ourselves. So it doesn't have to be super expensive to pay someone to do basic maintenance for you?

I agree. If you can afford artificial grass, do it. Your dh obviously has no interest in maintaining a garden and it's a lot of work for you to do on your own.

we need an entire new patio, front garden needs paving or anything instead of grass, driveway is a mix of paving slabs and grass and a bush and a giant thorny weed due to him and his brother dumping shite in the corner when we moved in, as a "rockery", or as i called it, couldnt be arsed to take rubble to the tip.
the back garden is triangular and the previous owners sectioned off 2 triangular bits for plants, i want it all gone because i just cant stop cats from going on it, ive even put seedlings in a pot and theyve used the pot! there are a couple of steps into the back garden which i want creating into a slope so toddler can ride a bike round there without tumbling down steps. i CANNOT lift up paving slabs /flags? by myself, im simply not strong enough and i dont know where to start.
to a previous poster who thinks im not bothered either, i cant do it by myself!
my "partner gets home from work around 2-3 hours before me and he may do a bit of washing up from the night before if there is any, hes supposed to wash up after tea but for some reason this doesnt include pans/ baking trays) and otherwise will just sit on his phone and then moan later on that he doesnt get time to do his hobby!

You're correct, you can't do it on your own. My dh didn't care much about the garden...I kept trying to do it myself but it was impossible really. When we could afford it we got a new patio put in and artificial grass. Virtually no maintenance. If you can afford it, just pay someone else to do it.

Well the garden appears to be a symptom rather than the cause.

Look into getting the work done professionally...doesn't sound like you need a gardener as such for most of it, just a couple of strong men with the means to cart rubbish away. Artificial lawn and cats hate the smell of citrus so drop some lemon and orange peel around.

And with that sorted, address the fundamental issue of your lazy partner because once the garden is sorted it'll be something else.

I think it's safe to say that if the OP had money for gardeners etc she would t be stressing herself over it. On mumsnet people always advise cleaners, nannies, decorators etc but many people can't afford it.

Well the extra strong weedkiller might fix the cat problem and for sure your toddler can't play out for a while now.

ive tried those high pitched sensor things, lemon balm etc, sticking canes in in jagged points ( like a battlefield ) nothing works, even when we had a cat of our own who preferred to poo inside we still got other cats shitting, i came home from holiday once after id planted some new plants in the front, cat was inside on "pre cattery lockdown" during this, however when i came home and went to water them, i noticed one looking a little off kilter, i pick it up to repot and there was shit in the hole, our cat was still at the cattery as they had specific opening times! its relentless!

Which is why I said that for most of the work, she probably doesn't need a gardener, just a strong man or two who can carry a load of the shit away. That's an expense, yes, but if the alternative is a garden that's worse than useless and making you miserable, it's worth it if it's in any way possible. It's a potential solution; there are always reasons not to do something. If the solution doesn't work, well, it doesn't work.

And it sounds as though the lazy useless partner is the real problem here. That's more complicated.

update, after a heated discussion this morning, its up to me so get the garden sorted, im at home monday and friday so i have the time to call people for quotes.
fine, ill do that and when it costs thousands ££££££ then he can go fuck himself, he could have made a start on the 2 fence panels that blew down on christmas eve today, but no he's vegetated on the sofa instead. Lazy c**t.