Am finding gardening really hard.

[Paranoidandroidmarvin]

I am just a beginner. Moved into my new house last October and this was the first time I didn’t have an established garden. Mostly I have just moved in, weeded and not really done much else.

But this garden was just grass a shed and a small patio. And I hated it. So I decided to jump in with both feet. Spent hours and hours reading and watching you tubes etc.

So spring came and I started to create a garden. Even grew lots of it myself from scratch. loved that part so much getting up and seeing how much things had grown etc.

but I am now in this battle to keep it all alive. I have lost so many plants to black aphids, no matter what trick I used or what bottle I sprayed.
My rose is being eaten alive by aphids and caterpillars. I have mould growing on one of my pots. I have sweet peas leaves going yellow either due to over watering or under watering I have no figured out what.

does this get easier? And more enjoyable? I sound really pathetic I’m sorry. I just feel out of my depth and I’m just trying to keep them all alive and seem to be failing no matter what I do. Am I just not born to garden!!!!

It will get better and easier,

if the sweet pea leaves are going yellow - feed them, buy some miracle grow liquid/ slow release granules
aphids - spray rose clear - might need a few goes
the mould on your pots - post some pics and we can advise? Might be blight

If a plant dies you can replace it, keep going, keep posting in here for advice and post photos so we can advise

I think it must be harder if you've started from scratch and put a lot of new plants in that seem to be failing all at once.

I moved into a house with quite an established garden and have made changes each year but really only to a handful of plants so my failures have felt minimal. Mine has a LOT of flowering shrubs and a fruit tree which I had no clue about. I've had to Google and identify a lot of things and try out different types of pruning each year to see what works. I'm still a bit stumped with some, especially the magnolia. You'll get there! If something dies just do a bit more research on care, chalk it up to experience and replace it with something else.

I'm a VERY lazy gardener, and had no previous experience before we moved to a house with a garden 13 years ago. My tip is this - all my plants basically have to able to survive by themselves!

I initially worked on the basis of seeing what grew well in others' gardens nearby (or what was already self-seeded in mine), and working with that. It's always trial and error, and I've had many things I've grown from seed not thrive, but you'll find other things do OK.

I have loads of valerian, wallflowers and blue thistles in one bed, with masses of sedum for autumn colour and winter structure. They have loads of mad honeysuckle growing up a wall and trellis behind them.

In other beds (shady) I have lots of shuttlecock ferns, hart's tongue ferns, shady spurge, climbing hydrangea.

Then another bed (north facing), I have hellebores, lady's mantle, same fern combinations, and absolutely rampant wild strawberry plants that my husband put in a small section for cover 🤔

I have an enormous Generous Gardener variety rose running utterly wild, and others that I grew from.cuttings of the original GG also now taking off.

I tell you all this because I do naff all with it most of the time - these are all plants that it's really easy to dig up, divide and replant, they don't need.a sensitive regime, many self-seed so you get more for free!

I promise.you'll have successes and failures, but I have a well-stocked garden full of frogs and insects and birds after many failures of lots of plants, and with a shameful lack on input!

Go easy on yourself (and if you find you're not actually enjoying it, that's OK too 🙂)

I never spray or do anything with aphids, apart from feed the plant which helps them to battle bugs. What you need for the aphids is lady birds and hoverflies so you need some fennel growing and some places for them to overwinter (old canes left lying around will give them somewhere to live until the spring). Also the sweet pea needs feeding. This is why gardeners say to feed your soil, and grow the strongest plants you can. Don't worry about mould in pots, soil is full of fungi and needs it to survive.

My biggest 2 tips for everything gardening is to make compost and mulch everything.

What feed do u buy for my sweet peas?

feed sweet peas with tomatoe feed. Carole Klein recommended taking the tendrils off to keep them strong, tie them in and keep cutting the flowers to make more appear.

I am going to guess this is a drainage issue.

Yellow leaves on sweet peas (guessing lower leaves), mould in pots; likewise pests thrive on weak and unhealthy plants.

In the olden days they used to say put crags or grit at the bottom of pots to aid drainage. I always found this actually makes drainage worse. Just soil in a clean pot is all you need. Water really really well infrequently rather than little and often.

You want the soil to wet and dry, wet and dry. By watering little frequently you either end up with a permanently waterlogged bottom of the pot; or only wetting the top of the pot.

Watering by soaking and then allowing it to dry encourages roots to grow down into the full pot in search of last bits of water. This makes your plants/pots more drought tolerant and is also healthier for the soil.

Don’t use pesticides - they also kill the predators who eat black aphids. So it doesn’t help the situation. Healthy plants will be able to hold on long enough to attract predators and the garden will solve its own problems.

Goodluck - I promise it gets easier and it doesn’t sound like your starting with the care free plants! There’s a reason a garden filled with cottage plants and roses are the symbol of a retired couple 😂

My advice - Perennials, Perennials, Perennials

Yellow leaves is over watering.
Brown leaves is under watering.

Sweet peas are pretty hardy, they don’t need much watering except in really hot spells. The good news is they also self seed so once they die in the Winter and the pods have fallen off, you can cut them right down to the ground and they will come back just as strong next year.

Hollyhocks are easy to grow and come back every year. Dianthus are nice small plants for flower beds.

I must admit I would advise living with a garden for 12 MTHS before planting or moving anything, to see how the sun moves around it, what plants come up in the different seasons, to test the pH and quality of the soil and as pps said , the drainage, and what plants thrive locally, but that's not very helpful in this situation!

First of all I would go back to basics and work on improving your soil this autumn. I would buy in a lot of well rotted compost and use that as a mulch. This will feed, improve and aerate the soil. And then do the same again in the spring.

Feed the soil and the plants will take care of themselves!

Op I am in a similar situation, I've taken on a garden that had been neglected and barely had anything growing in it, as a novice gardener. I'm 3 years in and lost over half my plants in year one (and I'd planted the supposedly easy options!) . Year 2 I made a big effort to improve soil quality, dug over with compost etc. That helped, more survived. This year I have planted several perennials and dotted some bedding plants around. Next year I will try growing from seed for the first time as it's costing too much!

I don't have any specific advice but just wanted to recognise what a massive learning curve it is, experienced gardeners sometimes don't realise how little it is possible to know. In year 1 I asked staff in a garden centre if the hole in the bottom of a plant pot meant I needed to put some sort of insert in it! My biggest lesson has been that building a garden is the work of years. I'm now anticipating it will take about 5 more years to grow the garden I want, more or less. There are still lots of gaps and empty spaces, it is still sparse. I don't want to dishearten you though, I'm very proud of how far I've come and people notice and comment on it now. But it's longer term than I would've realised.

I agree with those who suggest improving your soil, if you don’t make your own compost then soil improver can be bought in 50L bags from garden centre/ Homebase etc. When I took on a neglected garden I spent the first winter digging in improver, manure and any cheap end of season grow bags on sale.
Then plot where the sun falls throughout the day, certain plants will only thrive in certain positions.
I disagree with the previous comment on Sweet Peas, they are thirsty plants that need regular feeding. Once they flower the spent flowers should be removed otherwise they stop flowering.
Have a browse round charity book shops they often have good gardening books, build a little library to browse over the winter and give you ideas.
Dont be disheartened, gardening is full of successes sprinkled with disasters. Enjoy the journey.

Remember that even experienced gardeners lose plants, we just don’t blame ourselves. “That plant just doesn’t do for me”

i would drop the spraying. Long term it’s a lot easier to rely on natural predators, you just have to not lose your nerve while predator populations build up.

It could be that you planted quite late in spring so things aren't established and therefore need more water? Planting in autumn can help this, although any time of year is ok if you water a lot.

Is there anything that is doing ok? Get more of that! Try and find one or more perennials that flower in early summer and in late summer and plant spring bulbs in the autumn for early and late spring. Expect some things to die.
Others have suggested waiting for aphid predator populations to build up but you can buy ladybird larvae online to kickstart that (instead of spraying not as well as).

Strangely. The two things that are doing well is my English lavender and my clematis! And I read on here everyone telling wows about English lavender. I planted all but one exactly how the internet said to and they are huge. And one that I didn’t have space for I just planted in a normal flower bed no special things etc and it is also huge. Who knows

Mr Gran was a great gardener and always said: you have to be an eternal optimist to be a gardener.

She's right. There are always casualties. Eventually, there will be less of them. There will always be pests trying to eat something - champion the plant rather than trying to fight the pest (I think).

Roses: A good feed with Top Rose at the start of the season. Uncle Tom's tonic sprayed on the foliage every 2-4 weeks and another good feed around Jun/Jul time.

Sweetpeas: their leaves do yellow a bit once they start flowering, especially the lower leaves. Post a pic here and we'll alsoo take a look and help.

Aphids: I'd personally just ignore them. I've never found they really do that much long term damage and something will be along sooner or later to eat them.

Mould: again, post a pic and we'll help.

My gran (not Mr Gran!)

Just again on the sweetpeas: I notice another thread posted here yesterday where someone was asking about the lower leaves dying off. They posted a pic, so you could take a look and see if that looks similar to yours? If so, it's normal

Some of it is just working out what suits your soil/ light. Always harder starting all at once.

If something isn't thriving in one spot, try moving it

I cannot seem to grow lavender. But my cosmos and gazanias are off the charts!

Overwatering is much more damaging than under watering. Best to underwater and then if the plants start to dry up, you can water and they will recover. But once you’ve over watered it’s not just a case of not watering for a while, it’s likely you’ve damaged the plants.

In the U.K., plants in the ground only need watering during hot spells in the summer. And even then, maybe twice a week max.

There are always casualties. Especially at first. Good soil is the key. If in ground add manure from garden centre once a year. Then you know it’s well rotted. If in pots use multi purpose compost and you have to feed and water, the bigger the pot the easier.

post some pictures.

Well done on the lavender. If you want to stop them going leggy, you can prune them. Either when they’ve finished flowering or (my preference) leave the seeds for the goldfinches and prune in late winter. In either case, don’t prune too hard, if you prune back to bare stem it won’t regenerate. Easier in late winter, you’ll see tiny green shoots on the live part of the stem, make sure a few are left after pruning.

Your garden will always be a work in progress, or at least, that's true for us. When we moved here it was overgrown conifers blocking the light, and overgrown shrubs encroaching sideways looking for light. Without those tress (we needed the space) we have a sun-filled south facing garden that absolutely anything will grow in. I often say that either a serious gardener lived here and really improved the soil, or some magical incantation was bestowed upon the space.

As our confidence has grown and the time available has improved, we removed giant shrubs and replanted with a sea of brightly coloured flowers. A few things fail, and we plant more of the things that thrive.

My top tip would be to learn how to prune your lavender to stop it going leggy. We missed the window and have decided to start again from cuttings.

I'm currently staring at our garden and trying to work out what to do with it so can only comment on the lavender: we have a lovely lavender that unfortunately split under its own weight due to lack of pruning. The bees don't mind so I live with it but I do wish I had been a bit more proactive a bit earlier!

Zombie thread!