Weeds, how weedy is your garden?

[Huff13Puff]

I watch too much Instagram. So many posters seem to have weed free gardens. How do they do it?

My lawn is 90% weeds but my borders are weed-free. I am in a newbuild so my garden isn't very mature. I have covered all the gaps in my borders with mulch. I used bark chippings the first couple of years and Strulch this year. This seems to suppress most of the weeds. I pull out any I find. I've given up on the grass as it needs digging up and starting again.

Oh I wish 🤣 I have the ‘nature corner’ with nice wild plants (speedwell, pink loosestrife etc) behind the compost heap. I leave things like wild geranium and vetch where they sprout under the trees. I pull nettles (when rugged up) because I have a hyper-sensitivity to them and getting stung messes up my joints. I am fighting the good fight against hedge bindweed and creeping (rampaging) cinquefoil. There are bits of chickweed and that tall wispy pink one I can never remember the name of which I pull up once a week or so. Patches of wild ginger and celandine that I kept in check but leave as ground cover here and there.

I think perfect gardens are owned by people with more spare time than me, or by people who spray their weeds. That’s what I tell myself anyway 😁

If they're pretty and/or the bees like them, they stay. My garden is primarily for nature to enjoy, then I enjoy watching nature in it. Certainly much less stressful to keep such a garden.

The only thing I really try to get rid of is the Spanish bluebells.

I have bindweed and read something that gave lots of tips. The final line was something cheery like, "you'll be long dead and the bindweed will still be there". It's only ever a battle, the war belongs to the weeds.

It's a wild generalisation, but it is notable that people can keep a veg plot weed free, but then say they can't do the same for flower borders etc?

We dug up and rotavated our lawn, re seeded etc. its still got loads of weeds! I’ve given up for now. Not sure I have the dedication it needs to have a decent lawn.
Regularly clear the flower beds of weeds. The patio has regular weeds as it needs relaying and sealing .

Every time you dig or rotavate you'll bring weed seeds to the surface and may damage the soil structure so it's best not to dig but mulch over with compost etc.

I am not the best person to talk to about weed free lawns because I can't imagine why you'd want one when you can have pretty, insect friendly wild flowers in your grass instead, like clover, daisies and dandelions. Clover in particular stays a lot greener than grass in a hot summer and fixes its own nitrogen so no need for fertilisers. Try leaving a patch of your lawn long for no mow May and learn to love your weeds.

@Ifailed vegetables are usually grown in straight lines with gaps between to facilitate weeding.

My garden is relatively weed free:
1 dense planting, so too much competition for weeds (you couldn’t see them anyway)
2 wildflower lawn
3 dedicated weeding sessions. Each bit of the garden gets a good weed probably 3 times a year, and I pull things up when I spot them

I probably have a broader definition than most of what is a welcome wildflower and what is a weed.

There was mention up thread of “Spanish bluebells”. The view of botanists is that the interlopers are almost always hybrids, the true Spanish bluebell is not common in this country. It has relatively sparse flower spikes, not the vigour of the hybrid.

My garden is weed free - I go out most days for a few minutes & dig/hoe them out. However, I have a small garden & am not in paid work

If you don't look too closely mine isn't too bad, but I'm up a mountain in North Wales, so a good month behind Monty and further behind the South, they'll catch up. One of my jobs that is to thoroughly weed and mulch a big border and 2 smaller ones. They weren't mulched last year. I try and mulch half the borders each year.

vegetables are usually grown in straight lines with gaps between to facilitate weeding.
I agree, plus for better yields we tend to leave a gap between plants, especially when planting out which makes it easier to spot weeds. However, I do feel people are more fastidious over veg plots, especially on allotments.

Mulching and running around the beds with a hoe on a sunny morning helps. You have to live with them to an extent.

I feel utterly overwhelmed with the garden. I am not at all green fingered.
Dh is fairly unwell and has no energy to do it. I am time poor (and money too I guess). I am not knowledgeable at all about gardening.
We have a raised bed full of weeds. Loads of planters full of weeds and dead plants. The lawn is full and is clay so feels like the moon. We have two lovely palms and bamboo which thrives.
I bought a weed puller and used it today for the first time. I’ve just spent a few hours weeding the lawn. It doesn’t look much different.
My mum said just get a gardener in but I’m loathe to do so. Firstly I can’t afford it. Secondly, there is so much crap out there that I feel like a failure. Thirdly, dh will be v cross if I get it sorted professionally.
it is an embarrassment to me and I hate inviting people over because of it 😔

@icelollycraving that's so sad, don't despair. For the lawn I'd just mow it and cut it neat round the edges, that makes even a weedy lawn look better. For the beds/planters just pick one to start with and if it's really all weeds then pull the lot out and titivate the soil that's there. Look out for cheap plants, giveaways on Facebook, and try to concentrate on things that come back every year ("perennials"). There are some seeds that really are easy and great value - nasturtiums will grow anywhere and are lovely bright colours (they are one year only but such good value they're great to get started with).

Our back garden isn't bad, front needs doing although not terrible.
Our neighbors is awful, they have knotweed and don't even realise it.

I embrace the weeds, but have been vaguely trying to stop the ivy from taking over.

Pretty weedy, but I think of it as biodiversity and use it to prop up my general smugness

My lawn's currently covered in huge dandelion flowers. I let them go because l used to have house rabbits, and they loved them. Now they're gone l need to sort the lawn out, but l'm leaving it for a while because dandelion flowers are the first early food for the bees.
As they turn to seed l'll remove the heads and leave the flowers for the bees for a few more weeks. Then l can start removing and treating them. I'm still going to leave a patch in one corner, though, and put some bee bombs and wildflower seeds in there too.