Help me clear this border - novice gardener! (Pic)

[NoviceGardener101]

So under all that crap is a border

How best to clear it? I'd like to plant a kind of wild flower garden along it for the bees but clearly it needs digging and clearing first.

Do I just fork it over first and then pull everything out? Pull out as much as possible first and then dig out? Firebomb the lot of it?!

Sandy soil, not too hard but very stony

Thanks for any advice!

You've done LOADS! I think it's wise to take it easy and keep it manageable - it's heavy work and you will ache a lot by the end of a couple of hours. Judging by the soil and layout, this used to be some kind of border, which is great news as soil that has been worked previously often has a better texture and a kind of richness to it, even if it's been overgrown for some years.

What way does your border face? The things you can grow will depend on the aspect as well as the soil. There will be lots of things you can grow, whatever the aspect, but it's important not to plant sun-loving plants in a shady spot!

Not sure if it's been said or not, eyes bit bleary from long long night - if you put round up in the soil wild flowers won't grow. Actually, nothing will grow.
My old house had dead patches where NOTHING - not even brambles or poppies - would grow where the soil had been chemically 'treated'.

I am at that Apfel! Glyphosate should be rendered inactive when it hits the soil - its systemic.

However, there are more and more studies suggesting that it does do some damage to soil ecosystems and gets into the water course, though these should repair themselves with time. I won't use the stuff now because of this. You can achieve a better effect just digging things out, but you do need to deploy time and patience.

I did some more today but not much. Mostly moving the pile of stuff I dug out yesterday on to the bonfire.

So, stones.....so many stones do I need to remove them all? I'm working through patches at a time and left the heavy work today but there are so many!

This is the compass heading facing the wall

So, unless I've got this wrong, the border faces south east? If so, that's a great aspect to have! Is it shaded by anything - trees, for instance, or is it mostly sunny?

Some smaller stones can be left in for drainage- you don't have to get rid of every one. But patches where the stones are very dense or very large probably need a bit of clearing.

I've been watching since 7am this morning and it's been in full sun all day, a bit of shadow of creeping over the tree side of the border

Every muscle in my back hurts so I'm just picking out debris today. So much old pottery for some reason?! Not ancient but shards of white and blue patterned china all at the same depth.

Shadow now creeping!

I would think that given the good aspect of your border and what sounds like decent soil once you've shifted as many as you can of those stones, it's really worth thinking about some planned planting rather than buying wild flower seeds and hoping for the look in your photo.

I say this because if bindweed has been a problem in the past, it is bound to return, and it does so late in the season as it waits for there to be other stems for it to twine up. If you have a chaos of young plants which you are not sure how they are meant to turn out, it will be easy for bindweed to get a hold unnoticed.

I would opt for buying some perennials - your border is small enough for you to be able to keep an eye on things as they grow and you can achieve an effect as good as the one in your picture with a bit of thoughtful selection.

Try these:

Verbena bonariensis (on your soil, these will grow well from seed but they are also available as pot grown plants)
Cosmos (the pink ones)
Helianthemum
Lupins
Marigolds (from seed if you like)
Aquilegia

Buy 3 of each plant if you can to achieve a good balance across the border. They should all come back every year, apart from the marigolds.

lol I've been finding blue and white pottery digging the borders in my new garden so random!

You achieved loads. Well done

You could save the pottery shards and set them into tile cement, to decorate a plant pot. Then some history of the garden would remain.