Is gardening outdated

[BulbsAndLampsDiffer]

I live on an estate, on my road I am generally surrounded by couples/ single mums in their 30s and 40s. I am single mum try to maintain my garden both front and rear, paining fences, mowing the lawn and general weeding, so very cheap and easy. However when looking around I feel like the only one to be doing do with lots of weeds on driveways and un mown front gardens. I know it’s not a priority in modern busy life.
For convex some one said to me years ago it is impossible to have a tidy home, tidy child and tidy mum. And I do let myself slip in order to keep my home and child looking put together.
No judgment just curious if where I live is the norm.
YABU too busy to pull up weeds
YANBU pride in your garden

I love my garden. Round us nearly everyone has AstroTurf and it's so miserable. I love to sit out and see the flowers, the birds, butterflies, bees and worms (not slugs though, my nemesis!).

But the weeding and deadheading is so demanding and gets out of control so quickly. My mum is always buying me 'drought-resistant' plants as she knows how hopeless I am at remembering to water everything enough.

Mind you, my house is an absolute tip - worse than the garden, my kids embrace a grungey style and I am not exactly polished myself. So I think I am failing on all counts!

We plant a lot in our garden and have lots of pots with shrubs in. It has big tiers and each tier was covered in a layer of a different type of gravel when we moved in, with a couple of shrubs in the beds and the occasional tulip planted in gaps in the weed-proof membrane. It took absolutely ages to sort. We spent all our money on buying the house so we spent literally weeks shovelling all the gravel onto one tier that acts like a path, even the five year old got stuck in. We planted a load of bulbs and seeds because we couldn’t afford any ‘already grown’ plants and planted our own lawn from seed because we couldn’t afford turf. It took a couple of years to achieve a proper, non-sparse lawn and lots of flowers, but our garden is now full of bees and wildlife and is nice to be in so I’m glad we did it. Still struggling to get on top of weeds though. The garden is huge and was like a gravel graveyard- we were wondering why it hadn’t sold when we bought it, but now I realise it was probably because the garden was unsuitable for families and people more knowledgable than me could see that it would be £££ or months of hard labour to sort.

So, I think it’s a combination of everyone working too many hours to have the time and energy to do it, and the fact that restoring an unloved garden to the sort of garden you can have kids playing in or enjoy spending time in is either really expensive or incredibly hard work. Even harder still if you don’t have gardening experience and have tricky clay soil- I understand why so many people can’t face tackling it, although I’m glad we did ours.

When I was a child my parents received a letter through the door saying they were letting down the whole street due to the state of the garden. I felt so ashamed and 've never let mine get that bad but it has been hard.

I've been single since my dc were 5 and 7 and work f/t as a teacher in a very marking-heavy subject, and became HoD just after my divorce. I spent years feeling I was stretched just about as far as I could go keeping up with work, trying to be a half-decent mother (had kids 75% of time) and keeping the house to a reasonable standard. I had very little spare money as well. To make matters worse, I have a massive phobia of slugs (don't even like typing it), so would only do any gardening if it had been dry for a couple of weeks, which is obviously limiting! I used to try but it did get messy and stay that way quite a lot of the time.

For the last few years I've been able to afford a gardener and it is amazing. The first time he came I stopped outside my house and couldn't work out what was different but knew it looked so much better. Took me a while to realise he had swept up all the leaves that gather (or used to) at the bottom of my sloped drive and go slimy, and also those beneath the front door!

Life is busy and hard for many, and money is very tight these days.

To which he will respond that boundary hedges that cause a potential obstruction to public rights of way are exempt.

I doubt she means topiary and stripe lawns.

more taking pride in your space, picking out weeds, sweeping leaves and rubbish and maybe some planting. Which actually is good for the environment.

It’s not a lot of effort to have a quick tidy, I think a lot of people are just lazy and don’t take pride in their homes.

Maybe it meant new builds? Certainly most of the new estates local to me have mostly driveways with a strip of grass of shrubs instead of full front gardens.

@Gogoea veg gardening has been on the rise since the pandemic when more people took it up while in lockdown. I have a fairly large kitchen garden and neighbours are forever asking me for help with their veg patches now. It didn’t used to happen often.

Yesterday a friend came for lunch and we had salad, an asparagus and spinach omelette and strawberries afterwards. Only the toast, butter and salad dressing weren’t from the garden. Veg gardening is ace.

Yes my late MIL told me that too. Every neighbour took care of their homes and gardens. Would grow fruit & veg, and share with neighbours. Would leave their rent on the table in cash which would be collected by the key on a piece of string retrieved through the letterbox. Different times.

I love the idea of gardening but I seem
to kill every plant! It’s also quite expensive to buy plants, pots etc.

Stick to something simple, geraniums or lavender for example look lovely and simple and very easy to grow

That’s very encouraging I love it !

I’ve always grown flowers and tended the garden. Less successful with veg growing tbh.
Front garden is mostly driveway but I have a smallish area with a tree, shrubs, grasses, bulbs and perennials. Unfortunately it attracts the local cats (little shitters) as nearly all the other front gardens have been pebbled. Some younger neighbours who are busy/don’t like gardening and older ones who can’t manage to garden anymore. I hope I never have to resort to pebbling over my garden.

Its about money and capability.

Some people can't afford a lawn mower or a shed to store it.

Some people aren't capable of mowing a lawn.

Some people can't afford a gardener and don't have a friend/family who can help.

Some people can't afford to pave/AstroTurf/shingle a garden.

Yep, I see more and more gardens with a small area which is manicured and a larger patch with meadow wild flowers. Looks much nicer too

It certainly isn't going out of fashion here. We love our garden and it is a labour of love.

We have half an acre: fruit trees at the rear and very established shrubs, some quite unusual and one side is a spring riot with rhododendra, camellias and magnolias.

The front has been my project and I have it so there is something always in flower: hibiscus in late summer, bright Holly berries in winter, hellebores,cyclamen and daphne in winter. Then the spring bulbs, in a winding bes alongside the drive presently covered in geraniums, petunias and edges by pansies. The bed in front of the house is in flower with oleander, agapanthus, penstemon, daphne, salvia, fuschia, roses with hibiscus, phlox and dahlias to come - there will be colour through to the late autumn. The hydrangeas and jasmine are in force.

Projects at present are a rockery and the front of the summer house.

It is a labour of love. I spend at least six or seven hours a week on it plus watering and the gardeners come weekly through the summer to cut the lawns and trim hedges, shrubs and trees.

I am going part time from the autumn and will have more time for more projects . It was established when we bought the house ten years ago and had been professionally landscaped in the early 30s. It has taken the full ten years to make it what it is now and to introduce colour for every season.

I love gardening, and all the gardens in my road look like they are looked after, either by the owners or the gardeners they employ.

I think traditional gardening is probably a little outdated, due to lack of time/modern life(style). I suspect that back when only one parent tended to work and down time didn't involve so much technology (TV on demand, gaming, doom scrolling), the garden would have been seen as a realistic hobby that people had more time for.

I love my garden and spend a lot of time in it cultivating herbaceous borders etc. but I am in a minority on my street. The majority have a rectangle of lawn and a few trees/shrubs. Front gardens in my road are typically paved/gravel/low maintenance (I removed a large area of gravel and put plants in as soon as we moved in)!

Edit to add, I admit that I sometimes prioritise gardening over housework... my plants (and spending time with my children, which is a slightly higher priority 🤣) are more important!

It's also about choices.

My DH is very green fingered and was raised on farms, he keeps our garden looking lovely but it's hard work, he's out there every weekend and every evening watering. He does keep our garden looking beautiful though but it is time consuming. Our neighbours are either very elderly or young parents, their time and priorities are obviously different.

I'd love to have green fingers but just don't have the dedication or enthusiasm tbh so very glad DH enjoys keeping our garden lovely.

We moved into our house 28 years ago, the property was previously my grandparents and my nan left behind a very unhappy looking rose in a pot, it looked as though it was dying, she said it had been given to her by my granddad for their 50th wedding anniversary but she couldn't keep it going, it was basically a dying twig.
DH took it, planted it in the ground and nourished it. It now flowers twice a year and is beautiful. It's about 25 years old.

It don't think it's outdated generally OP, just changed. As people have said above, gardens have changed with more emphasis on wildflowers and grasses left in sections at least, being fashionable now, over the stripey lawns that a lot of people coveted in the 80s (never had any idea how they made those stripes!)
I'm looking to move as I'm in a semi in (according to the BBC heat map and 'lived experience') a hotspot. And it's getting increasingly hot every summer. We are on an estate of packed-in smallish houses, several schools and an A road and motorway close - so much concrete, brick and tarmac - and also sadly, people here are increasingly concreting or astro-turfing over their small gardens - which I understand is better for them, but overall adds to the general overheating of the area! Less than a mile in every direction there are woods and fields and they don't get anywhere near as hot!

I personally love this look!

@Addictedtohotbaths

caring for a garden shouldn’t mean clearing native wild plants ( weeds) cutting grass and picking up leaves - that’s exactly the point - cutting the lawn is bad for the environment, clearing leaves, pulling up native wild plants , using weed killers or insect sprays to protect a plant - these are all bad

please try and wrap your heads around the idea that I take pride in mostly leaving my garden and drive to do it’s own thing

I think many people have such old fashioned ideas about what a garden and drive should look like and equate that with havibg sone pride - pride in wilful destruction and harming of the planet and environment seems a strange kind of pride to me

Weeded gardens, brushed up leaves - that's all we're talking about really. It doesn't take long and makes you feel better mentally if your environment doesn't look neglected.

Wouldn't it be great if there could be a scheme whereby the people who love a good weeding and tidying could volunteer to help the people who are too busy? A good spruce up of front gardens would lift everyone's spirits.

Everyone on my street looks after their front garden/drives. Several neighbours across the road are out all the time, mowing lawns or cutting back shrubs. I have a big drive with one side trees/shrubs etc, it’s quite low maintenance but anything more would be far too much for me, I’m not into gardening.

i really can’t believe that sone people are so antiquated !

people did that when they didn’t know any better how harmful this all is

IMO a lot of home owners are lazy and can't be bothered with their gardens, or lack basic knowledge on what is a weed, and how to keep them tidy.