New garden, just grass - WWYD

[moonlitsparkle]

Just moved into a new house and excited to finally have a proper garden after years of just a tiny paved yard. Previous owners weren’t really into gardening so there is just grass (and weeds) at the moment - no borders, no trees etc. Also quite a slope for part of it. Patio/decking at the top, then a bit of flattish grass, then quite a steep slope (30 degrees ish) then another flat section which is quite hard and stony as was used as a drive. We don’t need this as there is other parking which is enough for us so planning on making this part of the garden

Can’t afford much in the way of serious landscaping at the moment so don’t want to do a big job terracing the slope but considering putting steps in it if I can learn enough to do it myself.

Its about 15m wide x 10m long, south west facing. All open to the road on one side so some hedging down there is the first job!

Would love to hear people’s thoughts and suggestions what they would do if anyone is willing to share…pics added taken from standing on the decking at the top.

Could I be cheeky and ask a few questions before I answer? You've got a fab blank canvas but without knowing some more info any suggestions may be a bit of a shot in the dark?

1 - Where in the UK (roughly) are you?
2 - Do you know what soil type you have? (pH, loam/sandy/clay/chalky)
3 - Are you on an exposed site? Is it particularly windy?
4 - Does the part at the bottom stay damp?

Then what do you want to use the garden for?

• Wildlife friendly?


• Grass for children to play?


• BBQ area?


• Any screening to disguise any ugly neighbour's sheds or pylons?


• Cottagey / Higgeldy piggeldy?


• Jungly and tropical?


• Formal and well manicured?


• Naturalistic?

@DeedlessIndeed ooh happy to answer questions! I’m in West Yorkshire, the soil is a little sandy I think though not extreme, not sure on PH need to do a test. It does get quite windy as we are fairly high up a hillside, even more so with one side all open I don’t think it’s as bad in some of the neighbouring gardens.

Definitely would like wildlife friendly and to probably keep some grass for playing but not masses. A bbq will probably go on the patio at the top. Aside from some privacy screening from the roadside there isn’t anything ugly to hide.

I like quite cottagey/higgledypiggledy or naturalist style best, nothing too formal at all.

Thank you!

Golly that looks exciting. I would take yourself to look around a few formal gardens/parks with a eye for variety. I use the seek app to identify plants and read up when you get home.

Add in colour like this

They spread lovely too

https://www.primrose.co.uk/rudbeckia-fulgida-var-sullivantii-goldsturm-perennial-cornflower?ps=ODE0PTM3NTMx&gclid=CjwKCAjw4ayUBhA4EiwATWyBrh-dPzDpdldQv0jJJGgOwN2Gz6-NJmjl6ZsWGRgQNP9f4-RKpGOOhoCxucQAvDD_BwE#814=37531

Ah thanks the Rudbeckia look like they’d be lovely en masse!

Jus bumping in the hope of any other thoughts :)

Planting is the cheapest way to transform a garden.

I would sign up to Instagram. The gardening and landscaping community on there is huge. Find some pictures of things you like - colour schemes, styles of planting etc.

Then come back with a picture and we can tell you all what’s in it, and you can get cracking.

When we moved into our first house with a garden we just went In lots of walks and looked at what was growing in other local gardens (figuring there would be a pretty good chance they’d grow in our garden too). You can get apps which are will identify the plants from photos.

Sorry, can I be cheeky and ask for a picture from further back, I can’t get a sense of the whole space.

I’m in a similar situation (all lawn garden) so watching with interest. What Instagram pages would you recommend for a beginner?

I’m also keen to do a lot of container gardening as well to bring colour

If it is a new build you might find quite a lot of rubble underneath the grass. Might be worth considering raised beds so you can just ignore the rubble and put some nice compost in and grow whatever you like.

i'd start by thinking about where you want one or two big things to go - a tree and a seat (or two). What height of tree and what will it shade? You will want to plant a tree this autumn to get it started.

plan out where your steps will go even if you don't put them in straight away. these instructions look pretty simple
www.diy.com/ideas-advice/how-to-build-garden-steps/CC_npci_100146.art

then think about shrubs around the edges - make sure you include some evergreens.

Like @parietal I'd start with the big things, plan where to put a tree or bigger shrubs. Then decide on perennials that will come back each year (check final size because they'll get bigger each year). Then I'd decide on bulbs that will naturalise and multiply. For the bulbs I have snowdrops, crocus, iris reticulata and narcissus (look for scented ones to pick for the house) to try and get colour in the garden before everything else springs to life. While you wait for everything to grow in you can fill empty spots with bedding plants or annuals grown from seed.

Get a forsythia in for spring blossom and a buddleia for next summer.

I’d plan out a seating area, a wildlife area, a play area and then beds. Veg spot if you fancy that. Prioritise a bit of money sorting out your seating area. I’ve got a spot I. The sun for morning coffee one side of the garden and a larger patio for sitting and eating in the evening,

height makes a garden look established, so trees, tall perennials and shrubs.

I’ve got a small gardeN that can’t look great all the time so I’ve put in winter interest shrubs as it’s a very visible garden all year. And lots of spring bulbs. Also early summer bulbs.

then in summer I rely on general frothiness and annuals I’ve sown.

but that winter structure is really important….

My garden was a blank canvas when I moved in. I don’t want to sound too negative, but getting rid of the grass has been much harder than I imagined.

We started by digging flowerbeds, which was possibly a mistake because turning over the soil brought a lot of weed seeds that had been dormant in the soil closer to the surface. We have been battling enormous amounts of weeds ever since 😣

We found that the soil under the grass was also really nutrient poor, which I think is quite common as grass takes a lot of nutrients from the soil.

As we have a large garden, we did it in stages and moved to a different method, called sheet gardening later on. That process is described at the bottom of this page:

www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/weeds/how-to-kill-grass-naturally-kill-unwanted-grass-in-your-yard.htm

It’s not the quickest or the nicest looking way of getting rid of grass, but it’s so much better as there’s no digging involved, so you don’t disturb the massive weed seed bank that’s hiding under the grass. Plus as the cardboard breaks down, it actually adds carbon to the soil and enriches it.

You have to be a little bit patient with that method. But you can use that time to plan out what you’re going to plant! I’d start by putting in some structure first, some shrubs, may be a tree if that’s what you want. I wouldn’t actually put in anything smaller than that in the first year, so that you have time to see what weeds come up first.

In the first few years we found that we got a lot more pests, like greenfly and slugs & snails than you’d normally expect to see. That sorted itself out once the garden became a little bit more established. But it did mean that anything delicate had a very hard time surviving in those first few years, so make sure that the first things you put in are not too delicate or they’ll become slug fodder! It’s worth googling slug resistant plants...

To end on a more positive note, it’s been hard work, but also fascinating to watch my garden turn from a boring bit of grass that was effectively an ecological dead zone, to something that is now full of bees, butterflies and birds. We even have our own hedgehog now. There just wouldn’t have been anything of interest for them in the garden before 🦔

We moved into our newbuild a few months ago and also have a blank canvas to work on. It is a fairly good size (moreso than you hear about some newbuilds) but having had mature gardens previously we are aware of what we want to do and to a certain extent are following a similar layout to our old house as the garden faces the same way and we know what works (and what doesn't).
Essentially we want a good area of lawn, lots of hedging, a few trees & feature bushes, an area of flowers (sunny side) and a selection of ferns etc (shady side). The main point is that it is very green, wildlife friendly and not overly formal.

We have already had the patio extended but are not putting in raised planters etc as we will probably be adding a conservatory in a year or so so other than patio furniture are leaving it empty. We have also had the path extended and a base put down for a decent sized shed.
Hedging is already in, a mixture of Hornbeam & Copper Beech, this will be interplanted with some Holly and Hawthorn and in time this will hide the fence and provide a pleasant backdrop.
A Fan Palm is in (left a magnificent specimen at our last house which we had planted 25-years previously) and this will be surrounded with smaller shrubs. A couple of trees at the far end of the lawn (Hawthorn and Apple or Pear) and a Red Robin bush. When the hedge is established some Ferns are going in with some Bluebells.
That is about it, a formal planter will go in with flowers and we are leaving a corner of the lawn uncut and seeded with wild flowers.

The main thing is to have vision of what you want, how you are going to use the garden and how any plants will look in a few years (or more.......). It is soul destroying to plant something only to cut it down in a few years time because you hadn't appreciated how big it gets or conversely to plant something in the wrong place where it struggles. Also to plant a tree and then suffer falling leaves where you don't want them.

@moonlitsparkle we have a very similar blank canvas also in west Yorkshire! waves we're still early doors in the planning but have planted hundreds on daffodil bulbs on an inaccessible bit of garden that we're allowing to grow wild and they looked amazing this spring. Would cut down on the mowing needed on your slope until late spring too 😊

Wow thanks so much all for the advice!

@Petronus it’s strangely hard to photograph in a way that looks true but I’ve taken one from the bottom corner and another from the top at the side which might give more of an idea.

@Geneticsbunny not a new build, decades old but the previous owners said they just weren’t really interested in gardening, they put in the decking at the top and that’s it really.

Thanks for the plants/design suggestions @BadAtMaths2 and @megletthesecond and especially for thinking about winter structure as it did indeed look so barren when we were first viewing in Jan. I will definitely start with getting some shrubs and will think about a small tree – it’s would be nice to have some shade from this in summer as I suspect the full sun will be a bit unbearable for my pale freckly skin when it’s hot! That’s a really useful steps guide @parietal

Good heads up about the potential pitfalls in removing the grass @CrimsonAlligator , looks like the sheet gardening might be a good way to go to get ready for next year. I’m definitely wanting to prioritise hedging plants @Dougieowner , some of these sound great.

Love the sound of all the bulbs @starlingdarling and @harriethoyle I’m definitely going to dig loads into the slope 😊 and hello to a fellow West Yorks gardener!

There are so many I wouldn’t know where to start as each one are there own styles.

I would start by searching hashtags like garden design, landscape design and just exploring around. The more you like certain pictures or styles the more insta will suggest.

check the other hashtags of the images you like as well. This will give you an indicator to the style, ie, modern, country, town, cottage, xeriscape, coastal, matrix, block, kitchen, naturalistic, jungle, meadow, container, woodland, Mediterranean, water, new perennial movement, etc. And searching those hashtags and you will find even more.

My garden was also a blank canvas when I moved in, and I was a novice but very keen gardener.

the best advice I can offer, sorry if someone’s already said, I just skimmed the replies is:

• measure the garden and plan it on a piece of paper. This really helped me
• watch the sun on the garden through the day. I used to take pictures from a high up window, you’ll only be able to plant certain plants in certain places
• Start very slow, it can be really expensive and mistakes will inevitably be made - look for perennial pot lucks on gardening sites!
• add little places for bench(es) if you have space, add a pond in a sunny site

You mentioned hedging. For that, I’d go for a laurel - evergreen and glossy, looks lovely all year round.

For everything else, I’d think about your lifestyle first. If you’re a busy household, the last thing you need is multiple plants that have different care needs.

It’s taken me a while, but I’m getting close to nailing it for my circumstances. Front garden is mainly roses (standards and shrubs). They look (and smell) amazing and they all need the same care at the same time.

Am less worried re the back garden as passers-by don’t see it! I’ve gone for shrubs that grow well and don’t need a huge amount of effort. Got a lovely bay. A red Robin. A couple of variations on the red Robin called pink marble - they look lovely all year round. Basically, I’ve tended to keep the majority of my back garden as “interesting” shrubs. And then I inject the colour with bedding plants in pots for the summer. This makes it fairly low maintenance with regards to care - the biggest chunk of maintenance is watering the bedding plants in pots.

For a bit of an out there idea... have a look at @theyorkshirejunglegarden on Instagram. Somehow they've found tropical plants that can survive the cold north. @hertstinytropicalgarden is another awesome one but obviously further south.

@ArrangeYourFace1 I’m going to go measure and try draw it out this evening, it will definitely help me to visualise things I think!

I’ve been looking at Red Robin @Furries but not come across the pink marble version, that looks lovely.

@starlingdarling that’s amazing and only a few miles from me actually! Really interesting seeing some of the unusual things they’ve got going on.

Thanks all much appreciated!

I know, I love the jungle garden! I found it completely by accident on Instagram when looking for photos of a tree fern (am desperately trying to pursuade DH that we need one ). I couldn't believe they managed to grow all of that in the north of England.