How many hours a week do you garden? I know this is a piece of string question

[Karbea]

Hello,

I've an average sized garden, with nothing but grass and some pretty ill look hedgerow around the edge. I'm really keen to create a cottage garden, veg etc. I'm starting from scratch, i've just ordered how to be a gardener...
Roughly how many hours a week do you think I need to allocate to gardening?

thank you!

I have a large mature garden with shrubs, lawn and trees. Probably 2 hours a week this time of year, none in winter and 4 hours a week in spring/summer. If I was maintaing a vegtable patch it woudl be twice that amount of work.

Creating a garden from scratch is a whole different story though. It takes weeks of hard work.

Yes, when I was making my small, mostly cottage-style garden I was probably spending six to eight hours a week on it. I don't regret it at all and still, in spring, spend that kind of time in the garden every week.

Go for it! Gardening is a fantastic hobby and you create something beautiful in the process.

I established my garden pretty much from scratch last year and spent hours a day on it, but this year has been much easier and mostly just maintenance. I just do a full afternoon every few weeks now and blitz it!

It really depends on the time of year, but in spring and summer at least six or eight hours. Gardening grabs you and sucks you in, and I am happiest when pottering around. My DH spends much more time than I do in our garden though, and he is more likely to do so in winter/autumn too. But it is rather large and high maintenance.

Yes, depends of size/type of course! I have a smallish (30ft) housing estate sized garden so very easy to maintain as is mostly lawn with borders and some greenhouse veg. I imagine a cottage style garden would be harder work?

A lot depends on the type of plants you go for. Some need staking or regular deadheading, feeding, others are more forgiving and may just need a prune once a year or even every couple of years. A newly created garden may need more weeding too until the plants fill their allocated space and leave less space for weeds. Planning an irrigation system may be a good idea and modern systems can be run off water butts. They will save time plus you can go away without having to rope in someone to water or rely on rainy weather.

Veg gardens are always more work than ornamentals.

Don't go for too much grass lawn either. I have spent quiet a lot of time trying to rescue our damp weedy mossy patch of green after the summer downpours. Mowing is a pain and grass never stops growing.

Today I am facing the prospect of raking piles of dead grass because the mower has chewed through it but its so damp and spongey it will not go in the grass collection box on the back of the mower. It just drops back on the blade and turns into a sort of mulch in long windrows up and down the lawn.

I have an allotment not a garden. It is 33ft x 44ft.
At the moment it is a jungle- 3ft high grass and weeds as i've just had a baby and have not had the energy nor the time to sort it out.
Before baby was born, i'd go for 2hrs on a week night and all day Sunday.
During summer months I have to go every other night to water the plants or they'd die.