Is gardening outdated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 think it’s yet another thing that’s fallen victim to the rising cost of living. When I was a growing up both parents working full time was unusual, which meant there were just more hours of adult labour available to do things like tend the garden. These days everyone’s working their arse off just to keep a roof over their heads. It’s not that people don’t care, I’m sure they’d live to have the time to care, but very few people actually have the time.

I have clover taking over my lawn, and I am letting it. There are so many bees enjoying it. Also, in this dry weather the areas with clover are still green.

I remember many years ago watching Bob Flowerdew on Gardeners World saying to allow the clover to spread because it is good in drought and good for bees.

Your ideas are actually outdated. Alan Titchmarsh wrote an article recently on how this 'wilding' idea is actually bad for the environment!

So you never cut your lawn and leave all weeds to run wild? Must be crazy long grass

Send us a pic id love to see that if it’s actually true

Little and often is the way. 15 minutes in the evening or an hour at a weekend keeps things looking tidy.

@RicardoOrchard - nah, I like my purple toadflax and herb robert! I even like the morning glory in the privet, although DP hates it and calls it “The Bastard Weed.”

The docks can do one, though.

My front is a disaster, but as none of the windows really overlook it I don’t care. Just prune the privet 4 times a year and I otherwise ignore it.
The back, however, is a thing of beauty.

alwaysbackagain, I agree, gardening is our big thing,so we have 200 ft,lack of time is no excuse, I used to have quarter of an acre,4 kids and worked ft. The older folk in our road have a company to cut the front lawns which are big, different design to us. The younger people neighbours 50s fit and healthy, both working PT,I get the weeds, caterpillars, ruining my garden,why buy somewhere with a 200 foot garden if you don't like gardening, I really don't get it. Someone asked why it was my problem, well we had a job to sell our last house because of the awful gardens both sides. They weren't like that when we moved in, but the neighbours unfortunately moved. There are only two messy gardens in our road and I am between them. It's got to stage people are commenting. The torn curtains, rubbish,rusting cars..there's no social housing here,a few renters who look after their gardens and people in their 90s who have lived here years and take pride.

I do think that the whole dynamic has changed for how people prioritise their time and energy and gardening is one of those pastimes that takes effort and to the untrained eye may not look any different after having spent many hours, mowing, weeding, pruning and sweeping every week.

I live on an old, well-established estate and I would say 99% of gardens look very well kept. However, I back onto a council estate and the back gardens of the 2 houses directly behind me are very unkempt.

The grass has been left to grow about knee high in places and conifer trees left to grow upwards and outwards, basically reducing the quite large gardens to a small patio area by each of the back doors to the properties.

I know nothing about the people who live on these houses, so could not say if they do not have the capability of tending their gardens, but I suspect that as they are council properties, there is less inclination to do anything to keep the outside presentable.

My late mother, passed last year at 84 years old and she kept both the front and back garden of her home immaculate. She did need help to mow the lawn and cut the conifers back but other than that, she did it all - painting, sweeping, weeding, planting, watering and trimming back. Everyone in her street marvelled at what she used to do, especially new residents moving into their new homes.

Unfortunately so many people who are lazy or hate gardening then put a horrible fake plastic lawn down (ugh)

Me too !

You should see my muscles from pushing the lawnmower and lifting bags of compost !

I'm a single mum, I absolutely love my garden 🤷‍♀️ when dd was young we lived in a council flat and even on the tiny balcony I grew a few plants in pots.

Im in a new build now with a small garden and have squeezed loads into it. It gives me so much pleasure to see bees and other wildlife enjoying the space. Found a hedgehog in my garden the other week.

I think a lot of people are a bit scared of gardening, assume it’s a lot of work and that everything will die. Gardening for me has taught me that all you need to be a successful gardener is perseverance. It’s definitely a case of if at first you don’t succeed try try again.

I started gardening properly when I became a single parent as it was relatively cheap, I didnt need child care and my 2 DC’s could join in or just play outside. And it made my house look nicer. You do have to do everything as a single parent so nothing was perfect but nearly there. Apart from my car. It was always scruffy, full of coats bags etc as it was the one thing I could never find time for

Maybe its not that they cant be bothered but its that they actually want it like that.

I love my garden overgrown. I chucked loads of wildflower seeds all over it and let it grow. I hate having the grass cut.

Im trying to turn my back garden into a tiny little wildflower meadow. Id do it with my front but people are still really snotty about gardens that dont look manicured and id rather not have to deal with that so I have a centre square mowed around a small apple tree weve got in the front garden and let the rest run riot.

To me, it looks so beautiful, plus its so good for nature.

I've got a little frogpond in one corner too with bug hotel, old logs and I never cut that bit so it's totally wild. I just love how it all looks.

I love gardening but can’t afford the extra cost each month to maintain it eg few compost bags here, mulch, replacing broken tools, flowers to tidy it up, shed.

every £ is accounted for- our basic bills have gone up by 400-500 per month inc nursery rises and mortgage inflation so sadly it’s eaten in to any free money we had.

it would have been fine if we already had all the tools but we didn’t and now can’t acquire them. Also we are time poor with children. So it just takes a back seat compared to our last house that was smaller garden and pre kid so we paid whatever plus had a gardener.

I love my garden but it's big and to keep it looking lovely I really need to spend several hours a day. If I was trying to juggle it with work I would struggle to keep on top of it (or get a gardener).

I'm really glad we didn't do this for a lot of reasons. We get lots of birds and bugs in our front garden.

Besides anything looking at other astroturfs in the neighborhood they've all got moss and weeds growing on them anyway.

Our garden is big, bigger than we’d have wanted, and it’s gloriously wild at this time of year, overrun with bees and insects and all types of birds nesting.

My parents can’t look at it without judging; they think it’s shameful and should be manicured down to the last blade of grass.

I don’t give a single fuck what anyone thinks of it, or if we’re deemed to lack ‘pride’ (weird concept). What I do lack is time, knowledge, and the desire to disrupt the natural beautiful environment that it is.

Thats lovely.
My mum's got what seems to be the entire world's population of ladybirds breeding in her garden. Everything is covered. She leaves it completely alone and nature just does its thing.

It astounds me how many places you see where litter hasn't even been picked up from the front garden/doorstep/drive. Those householders must walk past the mess daily and decide not to do anything about it.

For maintenance of a small garden I think you need a manual-push lawnmower, a brush, possibly a trowel & snips (or not, if all left to grass). You'd get the lot for £50 at Lidl or for probably free if you asked on Facebook. And labour would be less than an hour a week. Add another 30 mins to help out your elderly neighbour & do theirs too.

Pulling weeds requires no kit (as long as you are physically able enough to pick things from ground).

Honestly I think there is very often a good dose of laziness and lack of pride involved.

We keep our acre of garden tidy on about 4-6 person-hrs a week in summer, much less in winter (we do have power tools etc)

One of the 40 million here 😀. Our tiny garden and hedges were wildly overgrown when the kids were little. Occasionally a comment from the neighbours would bring us out in shame to trim the hedge or cut stuff back. Now both kids are in secondary school and I have secured a local allotment - it’s hard work with a full time job but the kids have learned all about climate change, nutrition, biodiversity etc at school and are keen to get involved. I am lucky to be the child of keen gardeners and will be passing skills on to the next generation. But it’s not for everyone. Agree with PPs that people are held back by

• not knowing how to maintain a garden / lawn / grow veg / make compost
• the costs of equipment such as lawn mower, shears, secateurs - and space to store them
• how to dispose of trimmings - our council takes as much garden waste as we like, free of charge. Others may need either to pay for a garden bin collection service, or have a car to make runs to the tip, or find space in their regular bin
• time. My parents were unusual for their generation in that they both worked. Few of my friends growing up in the 1970s had a mother who worked. Gardening is the easiest thing to drop when you’re too busy - nobody gets hurt if the lawn gets long!

Hedging is a lovely idea but give some serious consideration as to the level of physicality required to maintain that.

We used to have 1/3 of an acre at my childhood home and one side of it was hedged. It used to take mum and dad running a petrol hedge trimmer and an electric hedge trimmer about 2 days every summer to cut it back. And that sounds like it will be a lot less hedge than you're planning. If you can get a farmer to cut it back that's one thing, but otherwise I'd consider fencing or doing a wall for part of the boundary. A wall will be expensive but it's both aesthetically pleasing and low maintenance once built. Obviously you may be totally up for that level of work but I know my parents were astonished how much work it took once it had matured - they'd have to take multiple feet of growth off it every year.

My lawn is a disgrace but when I read up on how bad the stuff is that can control the weeds, and how beneficial the weeds are, I just have to let the weeds flourish. I’m going to try a clover lawn because that’s a weed lawn that I think looks pretty.

That’s still time that people don’t have.

I love gardening and pride myself in having a gorgeous one. Nature & flowers (and fruit trees) can be so uplifting. I think when I am retired, I will have the time to devote myself to growing my own vegetables and experimenting with seeds.

I've never really understood why younger generations (I'm 58) expend energy at the gym, when you can get a thorough workout by extreme cleaning, DIY projects, and adventurous gardening and have results to show for the energy spent. Both my parents kept very active & mobile this way...