Need a support group for reluctant / crap gardeners

[bjjgirl]

Hello all,
I love plants, I have kids of house plants that are thriving, however my garden is crap.

It has so much potential, and I really need to
Invest time into it but I have no idea where to start.

I have no motivation but need some. So
I thought I could have a thread where I try to
Do something each week to make a difference to it.

I need to tackle the dog poo, get dp to do the grass and tackle all the weeds, when it stops raining!

What are the best other jobs to do in the rain?

Can I join? I am a crap gardener. Not necessarily reluctant, more I have no clue what I'm doing.

I'm terrible at keeping plants alive, inside and out. I have a fern in the bathroom that's going brown and I don't know if I'm watering it too much or not enough. Recently I've put some plants in beds outside but no idea if I've done it right. A little help group would be great!

Hello! I would love to join this group, everything you've both mentioned is identical to me to my relationship with gardening and trying to keep indoor plants alive 🌿

Everyone else in my family has green fingers but it skipped me 🥴 I'm hoping for some inspiration and motivation to get the garden looking good this summer. So I'm here for sharing helpful tips alongside disasters for sure 😊 really good to meet you!

Sit indoors with a nice cuppa & browse garden design websites, pintrest, seed & plant merchants & create a file or moodboard. Find the things you like best & that will suit your lifestyle. It's much easier if you have a rough idea or plan to work towards.

There are so many experienced gardeners on here that can help you achieve your goals& keep you motivated.

What would you like from your garden bjjgirl?

Oo can I join? I decided last weekend that I love gardening but then it started raining and never stopped. I have done very little actual gardening but have enjoyed the shopping...
My top tip would be one of the 'plant identification' apps. I see a happy plant when walking around and take a quick snap to find out what it is... so useful to see what they look like full grown in a garden. I'm actually starting to recognise things quite quickly! And helps me work out what is a weed...

Hi, lovely idea for a thread. Remember everyone, even Monty, has failures among the successes!
Watch some gardening programs on I player, Carol Kleins current one on CH5 is very good.
Best time to get at those weeds is after a prolonged spell of wet, they lift out easily! Most important is the cup of Tea/coffee and slice of cake at the end of a gardening session!

My top tip would be one of the 'plant identification' apps. Plant apps don't have gardening knowledge - they're just a quicker way of doing what you'd do flicking through pictures for a match.They can get it spectacularly wrong, and have no idea that it's wrong. So only to be used as a starting point for further research.

Keeping the edge of the lawn tidy helps to make the garden look tended, and allows you to skip mowing for a week.

What specifically is crap about your garden?

I think that you can compare gardening to child-raising: you can learn all about it and think that you are fairly expert but unless the subject of your efforts (child or garden) plays ball then you are stuck. This is why even experts have failures. Find out your garden's "character" - what sort of soil, what levels of sun / wind / rain it has.

Don't get carried away with plants. That's running before you can walk. The most important thing is the design; plants come after. It's like designing a room in your house: work out the permanent features that constrain you (doors/windows; soil type), decide where to place stuff (furniture; lawn/perennial plants) and only then do you mess about with the finishing touches (colour schemes / cushions; annual plants).

When you do get to the planting, the easiest trick is to see what works in your neighbours' gardens (i.e. what suits local conditions) and copy those plants!

You need this book. It's brilliant!

Welcome fellow wannabe gardeners! I decided to tackle the weeds at the front for the house today and trimmed back the daffodils! Filled the green bin so I'm buggered now! If it's nice tomorrow I'll tackle the dog poo!

Last year I spent hundreds on potted plants to cover the septic tank but they have all died, the bastards!

My dog poo tip is make it as ‘nice’ a job as possible! So then you do it immediately. I keep a roll of scented poo bags hanging up on the patio in a colourful little holder clipped to a trellis; so they’re handy when either of them poops I can pick it up straight away (and do a quick sweep of their favourite spots at the same time in case there’s others I’ve missed), then I have a little dedicated poo bin on the patio - it’s a bright orange mini metal dustbin, and I got a custom sticker off Etsy for it that says “Poop” for it in glittery purple.....that has a bag lining it....poo bags go in there, and then once a week the day before bin day the whole bag of bags go in the main wheelie bin. It doesn’t smell so far, I guess the poo bags are scented and we keep the lid on and it’s in the shade. And the fact it’s ‘fun’ colours seems to make it less of an icky chore for me.

But a really basic garden book the most basic you can find . Also see if you can find a plant encyclopaedia . Find out what plants trees etc you like them look up how easy they are and where to plant them to decide if you can have them . Think of a basic design you're happy with and practice. As you get more used to planting and growing you'll become more adventurous. Watch Gardening programs too for ideas .

@LemonViolet

My dog poo tip is make it as ‘nice’ a job as possible! So then you do it immediately. I keep a roll of scented poo bags hanging up on the patio in a colourful little holder clipped to a trellis; so they’re handy when either of them poops I can pick it up straight away (and do a quick sweep of their favourite spots at the same time in case there’s others I’ve missed), then I have a little dedicated poo bin on the patio - it’s a bright orange mini metal dustbin, and I got a custom sticker off Etsy for it that says “Poop” for it in glittery purple.....that has a bag lining it....poo bags go in there, and then once a week the day before bin day the whole bag of bags go in the main wheelie bin. It doesn’t smell so far, I guess the poo bags are scented and we keep the lid on and it’s in the shade. And the fact it’s ‘fun’ colours seems to make it less of an icky chore for me.

Love it!! Need a photo of the poo bin thou

Enthusiastic amateur with far too much garden and far too little time 🙋🏻‍♀️ I have ambitious plans for my garden but am waging war against the ivy and Virginia creeper continually invading from a very neglected garden next door

Filled the green bin so I'm buggered now! Why not start a compost heap? I don't have a green bin - a couple of times a year I take prickly stuff round to the tip (or put in in my son's green bin) - and the resulting compost has done marvels in improving my garden soil.

@MereDintofPandiculation

Filled the green bin so I'm buggered now! Why not start a compost heap? I don't have a green bin - a couple of times a year I take prickly stuff round to the tip (or put in in my son's green bin) - and the resulting compost has done marvels in improving my garden soil.

I've got a full compost bin that I haven't touched in 6 months,

Well isn’t that what you do, leave compost alone to do it’s thing?

I use the green waste bin for woody stuff and weedy stuff that I don’t want on my home compost heap. The home compost heap just sits there, but I still haven’t filled it, it goes down quite quickly. At the moment because we’re still clearing the ‘old’ overgrown stuff I have too much for the green waste, especially as they stopped collecting for a few months due to covid. So I got a couple of big tarp bags and fill those, and take them to the tip myself occasionally (have to book 1-2 days in advance here to do that). Slowly slowly. We moved here 6 months ago. I expect it will take a few years to get the garden how I want it to be. I need to spend some £££ on hardscaping too and not sure when that will happen at the moment. I’m a beginner in actually having a garden but spent years reading and watching gardening shows and following gardening YouTubers, and I had an allotment when we lived in a flat, so I guess I kinda have a headstart, although I still feel like I have no real idea when it comes down to it!

Today I haven’t achieved much in the garden, it’s been grey and mizzly here in north London. About 5 minutes vaguely weeding when I was mooching with the dogs out there this morning, but I did take the tarp bags to the tip. I might go and do a few things now. I could apply the nematodes, that’s actually better to do on a rainy day like today, and I want to test out some paints on waste wood and spare brick to choose what I’m going to use on the new fence and a section of concrete wall I want to paint, next weekend I have some willing helpers for a day and if the weather is good it will be an opportunity to get the fence, wall and shed painted! Test painting I can do inside the shed so doesn’t matter about the weather.

I like to sit and look at my garden but I don't actually want to do anything like digging and I absolutely loathe mowing the lawn. I expect plants to look after themselves except for a bit of light pruning and deadheading. As for watering plants during a dry spell - that is so tedious. I have to say that the garden looks better than I deserve.

However I find houseplants a struggle and even managed to kill a spider plant - they're meant to be indestructable.

So I did the nematodes and did the painting trials so will see tomorrow which works best 👍🏻 and for extra measure of garden work for the day I’ve just spend a slightly unreasonable amount on bulbs for next year, Farmer Gracy have put theirs up for pre order with a 10% early bird discount already (and some are already sold out) demand for everything garden related seems to have skyrocketed in the last year. By the time they arrive in September I’ll have forgotten what I ordered!

I've got a full compost bin that I haven't touched in 6 months, You obviously need another one.

Or, actually, 3. One to fill, one to mature, and one to use.

I too am looking at my garden and feeling guilty that it is such a tip in my defence, the weather has been miserable for months, and every time it's reasonably ok to go out there the DC get there first and are busy digging holes in the mud that used to be the lawn...

Last year I really made an effort and it looked ok. This year I have been on at DP for ages to get the weedkiller out - he let a neighbour borrow ours a year ago and has made no effort to get it back - of course, now the weeds on the patio are enormous this is somehow my fault

I read this thread earlier and thought oh, the weather looks ok, maybe I'll get out there soon. It's now tipping down yet again!

My garden's looking fantastic - bursting with life and potential. Until you're close up and see the goosegrass in the geranium bed.

I dealt with a particularly boggy bit of lawn by laying a brick path then letting the grass grow back over it ("lawn" here is a loose term for land maintained as grassland by cutting in late summer).

So I'd make two suggestions

1. plant densely, so weeds are either crowded out or invisible.

2. make sure there's some sort of a path that keeps feet off the grass in wet weather. (OK it's harder with children. When small, they played on the terrace near the house; when larger, on the climbing frame amongst the trees at the far end. I never had to defend the lawn)

May I join too?

I'm lacking motivation.

My garden needs:

• repaint fence
• deweed
• cut the grass
• scrub and repaint all my planters
• repaint window sills
• wash patio and patio furniture
• plant more plants
• create something fun and interesting for kiddos ( so far we have only mud kitchen) to occupy them

Test paint patches successful; have ordered big pot of paint for fence. Hopefully it turns up before the weekend 🤞🏻

Also a plant delivery arrived today; some of them are a little smaller than I was expecting (“jumbo plugs” supposed to be garden ready) so think I’ll have to pot them on a bit first. Job for later.

Trying to decide what looks best in the meantime - weedy ground, or bare mulched ground?

My “lawn” has been left only half mowed; I’ve mown a path through the middle and 2 circular bits along the way so there are flat areas to sit on. Most of it will be dug up and turned into flower beds anyway eventually, so I’ll let it wild up a little in the meantime. One bit has developed seed heads and it’s actually quite pretty.

Successfully weed killed the patio (although then it rained), and potted a new acer tree. It looks very lonely on my patio but I figure it's a start. Hope the rain holds off long enough to get some annuals planted (is that the same thing as 'bedding plants'?). Years ago someone gave me calla lilies which are now crowded in pots and barely flower... I think I can dig them up, separate the root bits and separate them a bit? Getting there gradually!

Annuals, botanically, are plants which grow from seed, flower, produce seed, and die, all within one year - things like love in a mist or Shirley poppies. Gardeners extend the term to things that are perennial in their native country but can’t survive our winters, like runner beans.

Bedding plants are compact plants that can be relied on to produce a lot of bloom. They’re planted out at the beginning of the season and thrown away at the end.

So some annuals make good bedding plants, but so do some biennials (flower in second year then die) and perennials (will keep going year after year)