Garden design advice

[jomaIone]

Please can some of you Gardening experts help me out with some designing?

Our front garden (which is sort of the back, long story, but no road, leads right onto a cycle path and then a forest.) Is in need of a spruce up. I just feel it is wasted space. It's totally enclosed by a low wall and all gravel. I hate gravel. It's a couple of metres deep and the width of the house, then round the side of the house too.

I am at a loss with what to do with it. It'd make a perfect kids play area as it's safe and enclosed but it's all gravel.

We are just on one income as I am a SAHM so not a lot of money to burn so needs to be a cheap spruce up before spring comes. HELP! Any ideas?

You could either make a container garden with lots of pots, a nice table, some climbers on the walls. Or you could make it into a gravel garden with some plants into the gravel (depending what is underneath).

How old are the kids?
I'd just buy them some some buckets/spades etc and let them get on with it!
When ours were little they used to love playing in the gravel with diggers, building little villages and road works etc.
But that was before our new neighbours arrived with 6 cats

It's not a huge garden, so you don't need to worry about hard surface for bikes, not really big enough for learning to ride.

You could put a few slabs semi-randomly into the gravel to provide hard spaces for toy cars etc. Depends on the age of the kids - certainly not problem with gravel once they get to be about 5 and in the age of independent imaginative play.

Gravel acts as a very good seedbed, so once you have a few plants in there, they should multiple. We have a gravel plus slabs area outside out back door, and looks fantastic, colour all the year round (cyclamen during the winter), lots of bees, hoverflies, butterflies.

It's worth keeping an eye on your local freecyle and gumtree. Often people are looking to get rid of paving and containers etc for free or very cheap. You could maybe look at offering your gravel up when you find bits of paving to replace it and do it bit by bit. Packs of bee and butterfly mix seeds etc are cheap and cheerful if you have a lidl or wilko close to you. With Mother's Day coming up you may be able to pick up some bargain bulb planters in the reduced aisle in the days after.