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

[Lovelybitofsquirrel3]

Due to circumstances changing I moved from the family home (owned, not by me, by family) to a council estate a few years ago.
Generally people don’t bother to plant anything/haven’t bothered with their gardens. There are hardly any bees, butterflies or insects that visit and I’m finding it depressing. A lot of people haven’t bothered with their gardens.
I planted potatoes last year which were never pollinated, and one or two bees visited, I don’t know where from and they died quickly.
I’m not looking for excuses as to why people don’t plant but surely it’s simple to buy a few packets of seeds and turn over some turf.

Good for you to put time and effort in to your garden- even a tiny garden can become a haven for wildlife and bees - especially if you have a small pond {no fish is best for a wildlife pond} Dragonflies and water skaters appear, and toads or frogs.

There is quite a few things people can do for a low maintenance garden. Plant small trees they barely need looking after. I have two trees I don't need to anything to do, maybe a feed now and again as one is an sango kaku acer tree but that's it. And I don't have a big garden before anyone says they don't have space for trees, lot and lots of small trees you can have and they can be grown in pots.

Well it does need watering if it's particularly hot but come on that's like a 5min job at most.

This house near where mum lives has a gorgeous garden- but they have professional gardeners visit now.
As kids we used to call this house the ''haunted house'', but now it looks better maintained.
Professional gardeners tend to do the heavy work, cutting down pyracantha, {Nature's own barbed wire} In summer it's lovely walking down this road to see the gardens- this time of year there isn't much to see.

Yup. All of this.

Thank you for the clover mix tip… I’m looking that up now…

No idea how to change the situation though. Maybe Switzerland fining people has got it right?

or be like our Parish Council. They got in touch with properties in the area that had very overgrown hedges and waist- high weeds growing on the pavements out side their property and asked them to try and keep the pavements clear for the local residents. It seems to have worked, it's a lot tidier round the village now.

The "weeds" are probably quite good for wildlife though. They just look shit and weed-laden urban landscapes may invite anti social behavior (I will admit I don't know the actual evidence/data on that one, of course).

Probably there is a need in this discussion to clarify what the aims and purposes of "garden-doing" should be: is it about enabling pollinators or making urban spaces look tidier? Not necessarily the same thing.

As others mentioned up thread, a lot of council houses (and ex council houses) have these giant gardens as it was assumed stay at home mothers would grow a lot of the family's food. The whole "back to the land/gardern suburb" 20th century vision. Fewer people have the time or inclination now, of course, so the gardens just sit there.

Honestly, though, trying to improve the UK's poor wildlife status through gardening feels like pissing in the wind. If we were serious about all this, we'd be densifying cities and rewilding the areas around cities, especially depopulating settlements, golf courses, pheasant-raising areas and most sheep farming. Most of the UK was originally covered in forest; the popular image of "natural England" ("green fields nibbled by sheep and surrounded by a bit of hedgerow," basically) is actually highly artificial and is not what the landscape would naturally look like at all.

@GreenTeaLikesMe - Golf courses are the work of the devil, and it's possibly the lawn-work that for many people is the 'root' (see what I did there?) of perception of gardening as housework. Trying to emulate the green desert of the putting green became the epitome of the English suburban garden, it is labour intensive and boring - but looks 'neat'.

People don't want to live in dense cities though unfortunately. Its all well and good if you're starting from scratch and can create beautiful clean areas with lots of shared space and excellent infrastructure etc. In reality dense urban living is a very different picture. They do have some beautiful estates on the continent with green roofing and vertical gardening. Some of the apartment blocks even have trees etc on the large balconies. But this needs to be designed into the structure in most cases.

We need to mandate solar panels, battery storage, EV charging, super insulation green roofing, heat pumps, water permeable surfaces (patios and driveways) and rainwater harvesting on all new builds. Retrofitting isn't realistic for most of this and most of our housing stock is old. Then hopefully we will get closer to improving our environment and the cost of running our homes will start to come down.

It would be lovely if people focussed more on their gardens but it can be a lot of work and even those lucky enough to have the space are often time poor. Having said that, for those who can afford it you can make a massive difference to your space and help the wildlife just by adding a few flowering shrubs which, once put into the ground, really don't need anything more doing to them.

The sharing of garden space is a lovely idea in theory (those with space they are not able to use let others garden there) but fraught with difficulty in reality over security and ownership issues.

I have "weeds" (aka californian poppies) slightly over growing the very wide front footpath around here.
The conflab the council work team had over whether to allow them to stay was mental. They eventually decided they were OK as they weren't in the way. I am the only person in the street with flowers in their front garden, it's proper depressing.

I also told the council they weren't to spray weedkiller around my boundaries. I am one of those people and I don't care. I'm not allowing nettles and foxgloves to go rogue for heavens sake.

Absolutely, Like so many people, I have some older male relatives of whom I am fond, and who play golf as a way of keeping mentally and physically active. But golf is just horrible from a sustainability point of view, for all the reasons you say.