Help a total novice with new garden ?

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First things first -

1. Two adults working FT. Neither have green fingers. One (me) has green aspirations but no skills.
2. 1 baby and 1 5 yo and 1 small dog in the midst so lawn needs retaining.
3. We have no time except to barely manage to keep the 3 dependents alive and us well.

So new house has a boring rectangle for a garden. What can we do around the margins that allow us to plant some perennial shrubs and if so what should said shrubs be? Year round interest and flowers are favourites but top favourite is minimal looking after.

Also where could a small kiddy veggie patch go? Around the conservatory? Or?

The muddy patch in corner is where a small playhouse will go by the way.

Thanks enormously for any help to make this happen and double thanks if the ideas are written for me like I am 5 years old!

I feel ashamed that I know nothing about any of this!

Oops. Forgot picture. Here’s picture. Ps conservatory I mention is to the left of where I stood taking this picture

Without meaning to be rude, the first thing I woul do is the fence (if you were planning on doing anything with it). It is just so much easier to paint etc before the plants go in. Or before the playhouse is installed.

The next thing to do is watch the garden over a sunny day and make a note of where the sun falls, and when. You need to know roughly how many hours of sunshine each bit of the garden gets to then know whether to plant shade-loving or sun-loving or somewhere-inbetween plants.

Final thing: dig a few mini holes (or get the go to!) and determine what kind of soil you have. Sandy, clay, moist or dry. Again this makes a difference to what plants will do best.

Then, for minimum effort look for shrubs that won't naturally get much higher or wider than you want (less drastic pruning required) and that suit the conditions you have. If you dig a flower bed then plan to use a mulch (.e.g wood chippings) to keep weeds as a minimum and think about a border edging to keep the lawn at bay so you don't have to keep recutting the lawn edge.

Dig soil improver in when you dig the bed - e.g. plenty of manure and compost to increase moisture retention and/or grit to improve drainage - depending on whether oyur soil is naturally wet or dry. Again, it is easier to do this when there is nothing in the beds and before the mulch goes on top.

It'sa bit like paining walls. Choosing the colour is the fun bit but actually all the hard work is in the preparation

Far too many typos there for my liking...

Without meaning to be rude, the first thing I would do is the fence (if you were planning on doing anything with it). It is just so much easier to paint etc before the plants go in. Or before the playhouse is installed.

The next thing to do is watch the garden over a sunny day and make a note of where the sun falls, and when. You need to know roughly how many hours of sunshine each bit of the garden gets, to then know whether to plant shade-loving or sun-loving or somewhere-inbetween plants.

Final thing: dig a few mini holes (or get the dog to!) and determine what kind of soil you have. Sandy, clay, moist or dry. Again this makes a difference to what plants will do best.

Then, for minimum effort look for shrubs that won't naturally get much higher or wider than you want (less drastic pruning required) and that suit the conditions you have. If you dig a flower be, plan to use a mulch (e.g wood chippings) to keep weeds as a minimum and think about a border edging to keep the lawn at bay so you don't have to keep recutting the lawn edge.

Dig soil improver in when you dig the bed - e.g. plenty of manure and compost to increase moisture retention and/or grit to improve drainage - depending on whether your soil is naturally wet or dry. Again, it is easier to do this when there is nothing in the beds and before the mulch goes on top.

It'sa bit like painting walls. Choosing the colour is the fun bit but actually all the hard work is in the preparation

Veg patch should go in the sunniest spot, although to be honest I would be tempted to just plant a bit of veg in the flower border (runner bean teepee) or in a pot near the house where they are more likely to be tended to (strawberries, tomatoes). Great advice above about adding soil improver. I would plant lots of bulbs this autumn, This link has some low maintenance plants - look at the final height carefully! www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/10-plants-you-cant-kill/

My top advice is not to be suckered into planting any lemon balm. Smells lovely in its little pot but turns into a monster bush and spreads everywhere.

Think about the structure of the garden so there are different heights of plants - climbers on the fence, couple of tall structures in the middles of beds eg obelisks or wigwams of canes.

Perennials are good as they don't require a huge amount of effort and establish themselves well, but you need to leave more space between them than you think. If you want roses, bare root plants go in the ground in the autumn and grow next year - usually cheaper than the potted ones.

If you want early colour, plant your daffodils at the end of Sept, or wait until October half term so you can plant daffs and tulips at around the same time so they succeed one another - the daffs will flower a bit later but will be fine and you can plan a sequence of flowering through March-late May that way. I always put mine in the ground but have decided that this year I'm going to sink plastic pots into the beds and remove them as they go over and replace with summer planting. Saves putting up with the grotty bit as you wait for the leaves to die back.

Wow - thank you. thats SO much to think about and plan! A tad overwhelmed - but will make a list out of all this - slightly worried my lack of skills will mess this up.....

Do i need cuprinol to paint the fence? I want a woody colour really - no blue green etc.... (worries that fence painting is more complex than she thinks!)

also liking the idea about managing veg within flower borders instead of separate patch.....

Trying to make a list of things I need -

1. Soil improver
2. Compost
3. Manure
4. Fence paint
5. Fence painting brushes
6. Something to dig with ?!
7. Plants and plantable stuffs (At the very end)

Anything else? For the "something to dig with" category any tips or recommendations?

Hey, have a walk around the neighbourhood and have a look at what is growing well in neighbours gardens - that should make ‘determining soil type etc a bit less daunting. There are apps you can get that tell you what a plant is from taking a photo. New house I moved into all the neighbours have huge rhododendrons so I’ve planted some of those fairly confident that they’ll do ok…. If you’ve got young kids steer clear of fox gloves and non edible berries.

Painting a fence is pretty straighforward. Cuprinol is ok but there are lots of other fence paints available. The sprayers are a bit rubbish - they paint they use is thin - so if you have old panels in different colours you can find yourself needing to do lots of coats ( which gets expensive quickly) - cheaper and more effective to brush it on.

It doesnt matter what colour you choose ( my favourite is grey cos it looks nice against foliage) but having all of them the same colour will make a big difference.

Painting a fence can be as simple as knocking off the worst of any old/flaking paint then slapping a couple of coats of the new stuff on. Depnding on your knees, it's also helpful to have a knealing pad or knee guards or an old cushion because there's a lot of stooping/knealing to cover the bottom bits.

Cuprinal will do the trick. Ronseal also an option.

To dig: a bog standard spade. Slightly curved but not too much (if also using it to cut borders). Plus a small trowel for when you get to planting.

You can go crazy buying all sorts of tools but I think it better to just get some basics then see what you really need as you go along.

If you’ve got young kids steer clear of fox gloves and non edible berries.

Great point. Quite a few plants are toxic to dogs, including foxgloves, so if you've got a chewer then keep an eye out for that.

Bog standard spade, fence paint with brush, excellent.

So - we have a small bouncy idiotic dog who’s eaten something off a walk and has diarrhoea so a very good point about toxic berries. We also have a daydreaming 5 year old boy who likes berry picking and flower smelling and an 18 month old girl who eats anything. Good to bear them in mind - nothing prickly, toxic, thorny.

You definitely need a good fork (much easier for digging than a spade). Spear and Jackson have a 10 year guaranteed, which is good because forks break.

Can I ask how I will ensure my digging results in a uniform border? How will I make sure the lines are straight - and how do I demarcate it from the lawn? Large stones in the style of MaccaPacca from “in the night garden”?

I would Google “small garden design layouts” and copy a design. And be brave !! Otherwise you will end up with borders around the edge that are too thin to do anything interesting. The great thing about gardening is you can take risks and get things wrong.

Definitely copy what else is growing locally and doing well. And don’t be afraid to ask for cuttings !

I don't like straight borders. Curving ones are much more natural IMO and more forgiving than trying to get straight lines.

If you definitely want straight borders, get tent pegs and measure the same distance from the wall/path/whatever, then tie string between them. You can spray paint onto the grass if you want but you don't need to. You can either edge borders precisely with bricks/pavers or you can grow plants that flop over and blur the edges eg perennial geraniums, lady's mantle, lavender etc.

Good advice from previous posters. Re: plants - at this time of year garden centres often reduce their shrubs and perennials as they don’t want to look after them over winter. So it’s a good time to buy and you can keep them in a sheltered place until you’re ready to plant.
Easily looked after shrubs are Hydrangeas, Hebes, and choysias. Low growing perennials such as hardy geraniums, Veronica, and anything from the daisy family would give you good all round colour.

If you want low maintenance, plant in repeats. That way, you are pruning/deadheading/whatever once, which is better when you have limited time. Eg, say you decide on English lavender as something you like and is suitable for your garden, you cut it all back at the same time.

Think about height and not just what is happening at ground level.

If you go for evergreen shrubs, think about variegation to break the look up (eg a pittosporum Elizabeth, or a photinia Louise) and also flowering shrubs like lilac, weigela or camellia.

Something I learnt early on is not to go nuts at the garden centre so that you only buy what is in flower. When I started gardening, I spent hundreds in May, and my garden therefore always looks good in May and June. By July, it had all gone over, so I had to spend a fortune - again - on July/August/September flowering perennials and shrubs.

All gardens will suit a tree of some sort, a smaller one that changes by the seasons is an amelanchier. Trees give height and interest. Cherry blossoms and magnolias are also really popular. A small fruit tree?

An arch might be nice, leading to a small spot for peace and quiet. Climber growing up it, maybe? You could have runner beans growing up and around it and make that your veg patch?

Also if you’re putting in a play house, make sure you put a small bench or a seat for yourself. You’ll spend ages there supervising whilst they’re little, and it’s always nice to supervise in comfort.

Thanks everyone. The ideas all sound marvellous. I am a tad nervous and overwhelmed with all that could be done so for the minute I am going to focus on getting the fence painted.

Will have a think after that on how to put in a border and edge it.

Honestly, if the garden is currently square, I’d turn the lawn into a circle (put a peg in the middle of the lawn, tie some string to it and mark out a big circle that way). Instant ‘garden design’ and big borders at the corners.

For those still interested (!) have painted fence panels to equalise the colour to the same ish brown. Previous photo shows that these were yellow.

The sunshine to observe - this picture is at 8 am. It flips later in the day so I’ll need to work out what plants to go for but the next step is digging the border

You seem to have a south facing garden, if that photo was taken at 8am. Sun rising in the east. Am I right? If I am, you have lots of planting options, and will have lots of sun for fruit and veg for the Dc.

Well done, looks great and was fast progress.

I've enjoyed reading this thread as I too am getting my first garden and will be going thro this too so the advice has been really useful.

One thing I thought I'd do is draw the space and plan it on paper with sunny areas, seating areas, where to plant trees, where I'll have my archway etc. That's the only advice I can give!