State the obvious to me please!

[muddymary]

Hi. I'm using this post as a plea for help! I've never cared at all for gardens/gardening until we very recently bought a house with a lovely well maintained garden. Initially I thought we'd just pave it over or something but I realised I quite like pottering around in it - I've planted some lavender and started making a nice seating area.

The problem is its all starting to unravel.despite my best efforts, the lawn now looks like I've attacked it with a Bic razor and it's going brown and I can see that some of the plants are starting to die already. Also the lavender I've planted doesn't seem to have grown!

I think the problem is that I don't actually have a clue. So far I water the garden every night and mow the lawn and pull up weeds on a weekend. Is there something I'm missing? If there are any really basic principles of gardening - things that you wouldn't usually have to point out because most people already know them - can you pass them onto me please?

I am currently reading an excellent book called Gardening In Pyjamas by Helen Yemm that aims to do that. Sadly I don't yet know enough myself to help though!

Well a couple things to get the ball rolling:

1. You shouldn't need to water every night, unless it's been really dry for a while and/or you have some particularly new or thirsty plants. The exception is things in pots, which do need watering more often and in some cases very often.

2. Check what setting your mower is on and make sure it's not set too short, I think that can make the grass look a bit brown and rubbish.

3. A lot of plants have a growing period and then a flowering and seed (or fruit) producing period, but then die down when they are finished (typically, go brown, start falling over, eventually rot away if not cut down first). So it might be your "dead" things are just doing that. If they are perennials they should reappear next spring; if they are annuals they may not (or may come back up but be less good).

I am (very!) far from being an expert but hopefully those might help!

PS if things are dying down because they've got to the end of their time, it's usually OK to chop down the manky brown stems rather than leaving them there looking ugly. But people sometimes like to leave ones with nice seedheads, to give some interest in the winter (when almost everything will have died down!).

Hooray! I love it when someone comes onto the forum and says they decided not to pave over a garden. It just lifts my heart! I want to grab you and give you a big hug, OP, and to say - you CAN do this! It all feels like a big complicated mystery at the start, but honestly you will get the hang in no time.

I bang on about this a lot (sorry to all regulars), but a huge amount of gardening is working out the conditions that you have. If you have a shady, north-facing garden on clay in a cool climate area, and you plant tons of things that like to be baked in full sunlight, you are probably going to struggle to keep them alive!! So have a look at what way your garden faces, and how the light falls on it through the day. Every plot is different - do you have areas that are suntraps, areas of dry shade? And are there any other things that might affect how plants grow, e.g. being exposed to wind or being by the coast?

Then have a look at the soil. Is it heavy clumpy clay or free draining and sandy? Is it chalky? You can buy cheap little kits from the garden centre to do a pH test and see how acidic or alkaline it is, which gives you a useful pointer. Few of us are fortunate enough to be planting in deep, rich peaty soil - which means that whatever you have, you will probably need to add something - generally compost and/or mulch! (Mulch is brilliant because it keeps weeds down, saving you a job).

One thing I've recommended before is the Alan Titchmarsh DVD 'How to be a gardener'. Will hopefully fill you with confidence, because rather than reading about stuff in a book you can actually see him do it and then copy, which demystifies a lot of things!

Thank you for the tips! I've ordered gardening for dummies off amazon but will go back on and have a search for the gardening in pjs book and the Alan Titchmarsh dvd.
From what I've noticed the soil seems quite sandy and the area that's a sun trap seems to be where the shed is but I'll have a proper look at the conditions today and find out what mulch is
Thanks again!

Let us know what you have and what you like and we can suggest stuff!

Mulch = rich organic matter that you shove on the soil around plants. Locks in moisture and provides nutrients for the plants -and keeps down weeds too. Gradually, worms and other minibeasts incorporate it into the soil, which improves texture.

Summer is a dodgy time to be planting, look for shrubs and trees. In the autumn, and they will have time to establish, the summer puts plants through a lot of strain, even with watering,
Have a look around the neighborhood, you will see which plants do well in your area..
Good step getting the dummies guide, their books are really useful.
I remember my lavenders taking awhile to establish, they are now romping away, the house is full of bundles of drying lavender.
Winter is a surprisingly productive time to visit the garden centre to find winter flowering shrubs, my winter Jasmine is my best buy,

Ask the previous owners how they maintained it

When did you plant the lavender? I think they do most of their growing in the spring, flower through the summer and then around now the flowers die off and you cut the plants back drastically to encourage growth next year.