Gardening idiot seeks advice...

[PeasyCheese]

Hello.

I'm a bit out of my depth with my garden, which is basically a jungle. After 3 years of neglect I want to tackle it. It's quite big (for a city garden) with a pretty big lawn and beds all around it with large bushes and trees round the edge (some of which I can identify, some I can't). But the main thing is that it's become completely overgrown with brambles (absolutely millions of blackberries forming again now) and bindweed. My question is this: to get rid of all the horrid weeds, do I have to raze it all to the ground and start again, or is it somehow possible to get rid of the mass of brambles etc while preserving all the plants which are already there?
I've Googled this, and the answers seem to point to the former solution... but I don't know which sources to trust.

Can you help me, wise ones?

Thank you so much in advance.

There are good things to having a jungle - it's an animal paradise with loads of birds, foxes playing in the bushes, frogs turning up out of nowhere... but it's not very "usable".

Sorry, another question... for the bits where I can just get rid of the lot (there are some beds which really are all brambles and other weeds), would you expect a novice gardener to be able to clear this alone, or am I going to need to get someone in...?

Thanks again.

First thing is to cut back and remove as much of the brambles as you can, give the plants you want to keep a chance to grow. Use a paint on weedkiller with glyphosate on all new bramble shoots as they emerge, this will help to weaken the plant.
The next bit is the hardest, you need to dig up the bramble roots in the autumn, but without doing too much harm to the other plants. It will require patience and a lot of tugging! It's unlikely that you'll get rid of all of it, be prepared to use the weedkiller again in the spring.
Alternatively, in the autumn you could try removing the plants you want to keep first, either pot them up or put them in a temporary bed, then get stuck into the brambles with more rigour.
Removing brambles etc is hard work, and time consuming. You can do it yourself, but getting in a trusted gardener will certainly help!

Thank you so much, Ifailed. That's extremely helpful. Great tip about taking out the plants and putting them back in. Some are huge (much taller than me and very wide) but that could work for the smaller ones.
It's hard to describe quite how many brambles there are... I fear this is going to be a gigantic job... Thanks again for replying about what I suspect is a pretty boring question.

Coukd you afford to pay for someone to come in and clear the brambles. Once that is done you could probably keep on top of it yourselves.

LIZS - possibly. I have no idea how much things like that cost, though... any ideas of rough ballpark figure?

Depends where you are but I'd have thought £15-20 per hour, possibly plus a skip. Might be worth asking around for someone to assess how many man hours it might take, a good job for the autumn when regular gardening commitments quieten down. We had a 100x 25 ft area which was running wild when we moved in and it probably took a couple of thousand over 18 months to get cleared and seeded to grass. 10 years on it is still a work in progress!

Thanks again, LISZ - that's very helpful.

I'm going to see what I can do on my own first (have just invested in serious heavy duty gloves for brambles) and then if I can't crack it, and if I can afford it, I'll get someone in to look/quote.

Maybe I'll see if anyone wants to join a "taming the jungle" thread for mutual support (surely other people have totally out of hand gardens sometimes?!).

Peasy another with an out of control garden here! Well, it's a work in progress getting it cleared. We are doing smaller bits at a time, rather than trying to tackle the entire garden at once. (That's what I wanted to do, but soon realised it was impossible!)

I'm not sure I have any good tips, but I have lots of sympathy!

I had an out of control garden twenty years ago and just wish that we had razed it and started again. I'm constantly on bramble, bindweed and horsetail hunt. We did get did of the ground elder though!
I have now found a fantastic 'destructive' gardener for £15/hour. He will dig and chop with so much energy. I hope you find one too. Students?
Make sure you really highlight anything you want to keep.

PeasyCheese

If you decide to go it alone and have a large garden, maybe do it over 2 years? Lessons learnt in the first 1/2 may make the 2nd easier?

I would wait until autumn, have the blackberries off it first then cut right back and try and dig out by the roots. If you can dig up other plants and replant them its a good idea to completely clear the beds. Try doing two metre sections at a time so it doesnt seem like a huge task.

I had this, I did end up executing a lot of shrubs in the bramble root hunt. If there's anything you really like try taking cuttings?

Thank you all so much for your input. I'm reading all of this and digesting. It's all so helpful.

I've been tackling our overgrown garden this summer and it's amazing how much plants can be cut back by when they've gone a bit crazy - but I've had help from our fantastically knowledgeable gardener and it finally looks a lot better. We needed a man with van jobby to take away the larger bush/tree cuttings, but the brown bin has done since then. I leafed throug a book called "old garden new gardener" the other day and would really recommend it for what you're describing. It was written in 1992 but I doubt garden advice changes that much?!

Oh, and we've got bindweed. You just have to get out as much of the roots as possible - it's like spaghetti. Ours is coming from next doors jungle so is unlikely to ever be beaten. Enjoy!

if you start by cutting brambles off at ground level and removing them then it becomes more manageable as the thorns are all out of the way!

My mum always says don't look at the whole garden as a job to be done, you will get overwhelmed. Go out on Saturday morning and say I will clear from the gate to that big bush - 2-3 metres max.

Then when you have done it, you feel you have achieved what you set out to do, rather than lookign at all the undone stuff.

I have bindweed, and I have dug my beds, every bit of every bed that I can and carefully been through the soil and removed the roots. It isn't perfect, but it now comes up in smaller more manageable bits, eg I coudln't get it out from the roots of a shrub so it comes up there, and I tug it out at the base.
Every plant will die eventually if you keep removing the above ground part!

Oh and BURN bindweed plants and roots do not put them on the compost heap, and tiny bit of root will regrow

Oh you're all brilliant - thank you

I'm starting to feel like this is so much more manageable than before I started this thread. I'm going to start this weekend, doing 2-3m at a time, and trying to remove from as low down as possible.

Using the flowers icon to thank you all may be unrealistic given my horticultural skills. There isn't a blackberry icon though...

My tip for bindweed would be to spray, not dig, as you'll always miss a bit of root and it'll spring right back up. I unravel the strands as much as possible then shove the growing ends (still rooted) into a carrier bag or a bucket which makes it really easy to keep spraying the buggers until they die.

OP, here are some photos of my garden to make you feel better first one was the jungle when we moved in, second was after DP had chainsawed it all down (in February) and third is how it is now while we wait for the digger. We didn't dig the huge stumps/roots out when we cleared it, so obviously everything is growing back like mad. I call the middle area our 'bee friendly patch' to make myself feel better (it was full of poppies a few weeks ago!)

We also have another huge overgrown area (filled with rubbish from previous owners too) but as it is further away from the house, I'm just not thinking about it now until the other bits are cleared.

I think the advice to do a small bit at a time is totally spot on. When DP gets a rare day off, I plan for us to have a huge clear up, and we never ever get anywhere near all of it done, and I finish every day like that disappointed.