Please help me with my garden

[Mumtobenottobe]

We recently moved into a small house with a big garden (for London). The owners renovated the house but didn't do anything about the garden. So it is in very bad shape. The cemented portion is old and breaking down. It's all overgrown and not levelled. The wall sides are a mess. I have attached few pictures. It's all in a state that we can't use the garden. We have a four year old who would love to run around. Can someone please guide us on how to go about it. It's our first time ever having a garden. So we know nothing. What tools should we buy? Should we buy a lawn mower, a trimmer,...? What would you do? What would be your first step and how would you go about it? We are ready to buy whatever is needed to make it usable.
Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

You might need to borrow a strimmer to get the grass to a manageable length then a lawn mower will be pretty essential for that size garden.

What would you like to do with it? You could easily lift the slabs and level out the ground with a bit of hard work.

You need a strimmer to go over the grass before mowing it.
You’ll be surprised what a difference just mowing the lawn will make.

The grass in between the paving slabs you’ll have to get out manually, try and pull it out with the roots.

Once the grass is out it’ll be easier to fldecide what you want to do- section off a bit to make a flower bed or vegetable patch?
Or just plant flowers in pots?
Perennials like sweet peas, dahlias, daffodils, tulips, geraniums, fuschia etc will come out every year and add colour.
Raspberries are easy to grow.

The first photo, I would weed it then fill the gap with gravel or slate pebbles etc

Any strimmer you all recommend? See quite a few on Amazon in a vast price range.

Would be great to have a levelled ground. Will be lovely to have a swing for our daughter. Any ideas on how we can go about it? Sorry, have done nothing before.

If it’s just little patches that aren’t level you can do it yourself by mowing the grass then sprinkling dirt on it so the grass grows through. Eventually it’ll even out.

If it’s big areas that are lumpy you can use a spade to cut the turf and peel it back, remove the soil underneath and then lay the turf down.

You can use the excess soil in yo ur new flower beds.

A photo of the lawn after it’s mown will help me give you more ideas.

Can’t recommend a particular strimmer but I would go for a mid price one.
Depending on how big your lawn in, a small electric mower would be easier than a big clumsy petrol one.

This isn’t in that bad condition, I think. The fence is good quality, with sturdy concrete posts. You have some shrubs down the end. When the main section of grass is short, and the bits that are coming through the paving stones are pulled out, it will look really different. You could make a lovely seating area, create a bed, add some pots. You’ve space for a small tree too.

I like the round brick circles too, they could be nice flower beds.

Give us another photo once you’ve mown the lawn and pulled the grass up from inbetween the paving slabs.

Another photo of the end of the garden with the shrubs will help too.

I love garden makeovers!

Thanks a lot everyone. We just ordered a grass strimmer, a lawn mower and shears. Hopefully will have everything next week and get on to it. Will post updates.