Help me feel better about the horrible garden in our new house

[WobbleHead]

Been house hunting for a year - we’ve been living in a flat for years and my green fingers have been getting itchy. Was really looking forward to moving somewhere with a garden!

But. The only place we found to buy that worked for a number of reasons has a long shady corridor of a garden.

The house has been rented out for nearly 10 years and nothing has been done to it, so it’s a wilderness of overgrown clematis, dog poo, crumbling concrete, collapsing fences and a hades-like effect from the shade of next door’s leylandii and oak trees.

The ONLY bit of the garden that’s sunny enough to grow sun loving plants (I’m a rose nut) is concreted over as a path to access the full length of the garden.

Oh and the front garden is fully concreted over as well and the builder said it would cost too much to take it all up to make a usable flower bed.

Just having a whinge really. I think we could make some nice spaces in between the out-of-control twisty willow and what I think is a plum tree. There’s an Ash and a horse chestnut that have grown as weeds and we will be probably taking up.

Just need to reconcile myself to not having acres of herbaceous border (as I was clearly secretly hoping we would end up with in a house we could afford in London...)

What have you found works for shady spots? Have you tackled any nightmare gardens and how long did it take?

Would you be able to move the path, so that it curves in like a semi circle (or one side of an oval) from the sun into the shade and back into the sun again? Instead of having a straight path through the sun. Then you could have a curved raised bed in the sun.

There is a brilliant old thread started by shovetheholly a couple of years back in this section on planting for shade. Here it is

I have a path of full shade in our garden, which is between a six foot fence and an eight foot shed. I have long deliberated and decided on climbing hydrangea, euphorbia, ferns, aquilegia green apples, foxgloves and spring bulbs.

With a sitting area, your garden could be very lovely indeed. You could think of it as an inside area that is located outside, and put colour in through bunting, lighting, cushions, candles, outdoor rug etc if that's your thing. What about some sculpture? A mirror would create more light too.

Hi,

There are some roses that actually do great in shade. Madame Carriere is one of you like climbers - I've had it in a shady corner of a north facing garden that got something like 20 minutes sun in the evening and it went into a monster of a shrub/tree for what it was - the key was frequent snipping here and there so that it doesn't get leggy.