If your garden is messy, do you still sit in it and enjoy it?

[Wheeder]

We did a massive job 6 weeks ago. Looks like shit again. Cba to be honest. Lawn mower is dodgy, not going to spend an hour trying to get it on.

Do you sit in messy gardens?

No. My lawn needs mowing and I won't sit out there til it's done!

Yes of course 😂 Neither my house nor my garden are ever perfectly tidy. If I want to sit I'll sit, I'm not a martyr to housework.

I love gardening so there are seed trays and pots of things all over the place. Cleaning the patio is low on my list of priorities when I need to pot all my seedlings on and plant out the stuff I've been growing.

Our garden is always a work in progress. It's one of those places that when you do a simple trim, the fallout just becomes a big problem as it's difficult to remove. It's a hillside. An effort to just walk up it. Any project results in stuff, and that can appear to be mess. But there's usually somewhere to perch or stand and listen to the birds. So I don't much care. Everyone who visits comments that I need to do this and that, and tidy. And I totally agree. I do. But you know it all takes energy and it requires getting to a certain goal before it all falls into place. Regrettably it can't be enjoyed leisurely very easily. One thing I do note is that I love all that surge in growth in Spring. I mean it's better than when it was bare and wintered. It does eventually all die back, so you can do as much or as little as you like. I tend to find hacked gardens far more ugly than wild ones. Late summer is more depressing when the greens turn to browns and the trees just can't be bothered. I have neighbours that have butchered all their interesting plants and think a bonfire and a pressure wash is a tidy.

Looks a bit crazier than I would like (loved the lawn 2 weeks ago) but I personally enjoyed watching the bees going for buttercup to buttercup today.

I’m too paranoid about ticks to leave the grass long!

That’s a gorgeous lawn! I sit in my garden and it’s much worse than that. I have pockets of loveliness.

If you don't keep the lawn down, then they become a nightmare to cut. When it grown so long it would take much more effort and time to cut.

Dh cut so much hedge back a couple of weeks ago that he couldn't fit it all in our council collection bin. He bagged up the rest into ton bags and covered them with a tarpaulin to keep them dry ready to put in the correct bin on the next collection.

He tried to move the pile yesterday and discovered that loads of slow worms, some in a ball look like babies had moved in so that pile is going nowhere for a while.

We stillwater in the garden today, and plan to use it in the summer when guests come. They'll have to put up with it.

No.

No. I love my garden, it’s a thing of beauty and I have planned every inch to make it beautiful, useful, supportive of wildlife, scented, productive, sociable, relaxing and a retreat. It took me years to achieve it, I love how my family use and appreciate it every day and I am very, very fortunate to have it. It is therapeutic, life enhancing and maintaining it brings me joy. Crucially, I designed it to be low maintenance which helps too.

My garden is always messy, I live in a subtropical climate and it’s been hot and pissing rain for months so everything is massively overgrown. One thing I always do though is put a bunch of flowers in pots over winter so that I can see them from where I usually sit. This helps a lot as it’s a visual distraction from the mess. Try doing something like that, if your situation permits.

Yes, we do. I pretend it's a rural / rewilded / nature garden, but it's just massively overgrown. I do clean up wrappers / crockery, but the rest us just a tangle of weeds, with the occasional rose poking through. The toddlers and rabbits seem to enjoy it though, and it's fun to watch them explore without worrying they're going to break / eat something precious.

Yes we used to sit in it when it was messy. During the pandemic we started working in it and it's much nicer to sit in a garden we are proud of/satisfied with. Maybe it's that we are also older, that the house renovations are just about done etc.

I used to love to sit in my beautiful garden. It had enormous 100 hundred year old trees on it. It was like a forest in the summer. It's why I bought my old house.

Now ds and I live in a condo with a huge balcony and I sit here every night for at least an hour. I love gardening. It's beautiful and has lots of flowers, plants, a huge lilac I'm quite proud of.

Gardening is my biggest act of self care.

Op I would just skip retinol for a day and put on sunscreen. You should be fine!

I use retinol and sunscreen every single day. My skin has never reacted.

My garden was definitely therapy during COVID that's for sure. Just about the only positive was the weather.

I don't need to worry about not mowing, the farmer next door gets into the groove with "No Mow May" and has turned his field into a wild flower meadow. It's lovely - it'll get cut in a few weeks because there's always livestock in the field for a few months during the summer. If we left our grass this long it would be an absolute nightmare to cut!

Pressure washers have their place. If we didn't keep our stone surfaces reasonably clean, they would have been absolutely lethal (green and slimy) during the prolonged rain in April and May. I don't fancy a broken wrist or hip from slipping.

For me pockets of this can look nice but if it was the whole lawn it would look unkempt, as do the bushes/shrubs bordering it I’m afraid,

if I want to watch insects, and there does seem to be a lot of people who really like watching insects, I can see them going through the flowers, plants, roses and wisteria etc.

but I’d need to deal with that garden, like I would a messy house. However unlike housework, I enjoy gardening, and we have got ourselves into a routine, so we know how to maintain it efficiently.

the truth is cutting the grass and strimming the borders, always immediately makes it look a lot better,

I consider this worth it! I know it not for everyone, but the difference in insects is so astounding it brings me genuine joy to see

I prefer the garden messy. DH is always wanting to tidy it, which basically means chopping down or pulling up plants. I like plants. Apart from the odd stinging nettle or giant buttercup, which I do pull up, i don't mind the weeds. They are green and lots have flowers. I also think the grass looks nicer unmown and covered in daisies. I wouldn't be so keen to sit in a garden full of rubbish but an overgrown garden full of plants insects is perfect for me.

Mine is an ecosystem in the back, and a herb and veggie garden in the front. The insects i nurture in the back, make the plants in the front thrive. I have various fungi growing too.

I am delighted by the birdsong, butterflies and other insects.

Oh and I converted 80% of my lawn into clover. 3 different kinds, plus planted dandelions, which I eat.

I have natural paths which are created by the route I take to the washing line.

But you can have a well maintained garden full of insects and plants.

flowering plants, shrubs, trees, they come in all shapes and sizes,

our garden is very well maintained, with deep borders, it’s very large, and it’s full of insects, it’s a labour of love.

and I think this is what I don’t get, people seem to think it’s either let your garden become some overgrown mess, or prune it to within an inch of its life and have tiny plants, like they don’t know they come in all shapes and sizes,

our patio is full of pots, all different sizes, there must be about 200, it’s a huge patio, we have everything from massive bamboo to large acers, from roses, to petunias, to hostas to camellias, in the borders there is everything from azaleas to rhodendrums, to ornamental grasses, to flowering bedding plants, on the borders there is hedging, honey suckle, and round the house is wisteria and clematis. Round some of the borders we plant wild flowers each year, many of which repeat. There is also a lot of trees, from hornbeam, to pine, to chestnut , to yew. As well as insects we have rabbits, squirrels, deer and ducks.

our garden is not overgrown, it’s fully maintained, it is not remotely sterile, I can easily watch insects if that wss my bag, and that’s the point. You don’t need to let your garden become an overgrown mess to attract wildlife. It isn’t either extreme.

Nature abhors tidiness. It is a human concept. Nature is diverse and alive.

I’ve learnt the hard way that if you don’t regularly keep up cutting the grass it just becomes an absolute nightmare and a little job becomes a huge one. I’d rather do it every few days / week and give myself less of a difficult job. Personally I can’t relax if the garden is overgrown. It just makes me feel anxious and on edge worrying about when it’s going to get sorted.

Nature bites me and gives me fairly extreme reactions..,!