Can you help me with my front garden please?

[MerylSqueak]

There are some nice plants around the wall of the house. They are messy especially at the bottom but I would like to keep them. It's on quite a pronounced slope. It's south/slight SW facing

What really bothers me is the grass. The ground itself is very uneven so we have to strim it but it looks terrible, even weeks later, as this is. I prefer the long grass but this isn't popular locally and I'm not very sold on it myself.

I've looked into meadow planting but it seems quite high maintenance and I just don't have the time. I looked into thyme or chamomile style lawns but they seem expensive and to take a while to get established. I wouldn't mind growing veg there but then obviously it doesn't look great for a lot of the year.

DH wants to plant it with big shrubs but I think it would be difficult to achieve a good display year round, especially with my limited knowledge.

What would you do if you were me, with very limited time and budget? I keep going round in circles.

I know the buddleia is overgrown btw. I'm waiting until it stops flowering.

I am going to get some of those wildflower seeds for bees etc. You can get different selections, according to what soil type you have & whether the garden is in full sun, shade etc. I'm not sure if that's what you meant by meadow planting? AFAIK wildflower gardens are moderately self sufficient - you obviously need to remove the weeds as with any garden, but they should self seed.

I'm going to get some spring bulbs, & some lavender as well.

That does look steep. Do any of your neighbours have a similarly inclined garden, and if so have any of them found a solution?
I'm not convince that 'meadow' planting would look right there. Meadows are wonderful but do look quite messy at many times of the year.

I think if it was mine I'd probably extend the planting at the top and segue into some sort of rockery and ditch the grass entirely.

Most people in the area have a similar garden. I haven't seen any good solutions. The nicest ones are the flattest ones planted like a back garden and I don't have the time for it.

The grass is terrible (sorry). Job #1 for me would be to skim off the grass to leave bare ground. Then dig over the earth, break up the clods and rake it flat. That's a good weekend's work.

That then gives you a blank canvas.

The no maintenance option would be to dig up the plants and cover the whole lot in something weed-proof. Tarmac, concrete, fake grass if that's your thing. Use the space to park on.

If you're not going to park on it you can either leave small circles of earth exposed and plant three or four showpiece plants in them. Or dot the area with plants in pots. I would suggest having pebbles over the area if this was the style you're looking for, but the slope will mean you'll keep losing the stones.

The minimal maintenance option would be to returf the (now flat) ground. Easy to do yourself and you pay around £3-£5 per square metre round me. Then in all you have to do is mow it.

While laying the turf, if you have access to a vehicle and local tip, you could skim off some of the excess soil to flatten it a bit. Or offer free topsoil on Facebook to anyone who wants to collect it. Backbreaking work, but it's not a big area so should be doable.

I'd plant the area, but that's because I love gardening. I wouldn't consider that to be a low maintenance option though.

I know the grass looks terrible. I don't particularly like nice looking grass either though.

I wouldn't cover it over. Our drive is just next to it and it would look strange.

If you have any ideas of how you'd plant it, I would be very interested.

I don't mind gardening but I have my work cut out trying to rein in the back which is lovely but has been neglected for years, plus a vegetable garden I have made. I just have limited time and budget (and other hobbies).

I would take the grass out and do a centre feature framed in a brick/stone/steel ring circle with a nice tree or bush (acer! 😍) in the middle and then gravel square/ rectangle to frame it leading to a planted boarder with a selection of plants round the edge.
Then I'd cut in a straight flower boarder on the left (which i am guessing is the path to your house?) And pop a nice white fence along the front. Will see if i can find a pic to illustrate had a quick look but google wasn't cooperating

Def get the grass out though.

I’d go for a rockery with alpines and succulents and ornamental grasses. Should be very low maintenance. Some lovely steep gardens round here with rockeries and they also have beautiful flowers.

These sort of convey what i had in mind but also dont really... google images is annoying me right now

The time issue with planting the area is weeding. The usual weed control options (membrane down with pebbles or bark, cutting out holes to plant) won't work on slope. So if you don't stay on top of the weeds it will look messy.

cordylines are everywhere now (even supermarket plant sections) and are cheap, easy maintenance, evergreen and look good. I'd probably get three in different colours. Yucca has a similar look.

Camellias are evergreen and good for spring colour. Not mega cheap though.

Hebe is low lying, evergreen, cheap and forms mounds. Good for along the pavement end.

Hardy Gerainiums are good for spreading and ground cover. Do you have friends/family with gardens? I've never bought a germanium and have tons. They spread so fast that people often split and give bits away.

What about a sloped rock garden and getting rid of the grass entirely?
www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/design/lideas/hillside-rock-gardens.htm

Alternatively I would consider having a low box hedge at the bottom and putting down weed control fabric and geo grid and covering the slope with either bark chip or pebbles with some planting.

Do you have the time/money to build some raised beds? We had a horrible grass patch in our front garden (also on a hill but left to right) so constructed raised beds along the front (pavement edge) and alongside the path to form an L-shape. We laid weed suppressing membrane across the rest of the grass and covered that with loads of slate chips. In our beds we've got lots of verbena bonariensis, echinops, agastache, lavender all up the path-side bed, a few stipa tenuissima grasses, some tall thistles, an astrantia, lots of different alliums, a couple of erigeron karvinskianus at corners of the beds, a couple of purple salvias and a pink bottlebrush plant; sanguisorba obtusum I think.

It's all quite random in terms of shapes but I wanted lots of pinks and purples and to attract bees as well as a minimal effort approach as I don't really know enough about gardening to do anything complicated. We've had our raised beds in for 6 or 7 years now and they're still looking good. I chop things down in the autumn but that's about the extent of my input, there are lots of bees on the flowers and people stop to take photographs or to chat about the garden which was something I didn't expect! Because the plants in the beds are varied heights etc. the stone area in the middle isn't really noticed but is useful for accessing the beds for the annual chop.

Could you use a couple of sleepers and terrace it creating 2 or 3 level areas? One could be gravelled, with an apline rockery, something complimentary on the other(s)

Thank you for the ideas. Lots of workable things. I'm very grateful. I've got to cook now but will ponder and come back.

I'd actually kill the grass and reseed it. Our back gardens on a horrendous slope, was just moss and dandelions when we moved in. We killed and reseeded the grass and dug out the top to make beds with lots of flowers.

There are lots of sloped front gardens like this along a road I walk down frequently. The nicest ones have ground cover like vinca or hypericum... maybe something like this interspersed with a few patches of seasonal bedding? One planted a load of sweet peas along the top and let them tumble down the slope this year, it looked good.

Small retaining wall or stepped sleepers as a pp suggested. Then you’ll have two or three level beds to plant up which you could do in a border style - intermix taller and smaller stuff etc.