Tips please - starting a garden after years of useless garden ownership

[JennyForeigner]

Just that! I have owned homes with pleasant or very lovely gardens for more than ten years. My family is a family of gardeners, whether it's being close to self-supporting with a smallholding kitchen garden or growing flowers.

We have a beautiful mature garden of approx a quarter acre now which family very kindly help us to maintain, but it isn't right for us or for our very young children. I would like less speckled laurel and ornamental wells/garden 'trickles' over rockery and just some veg and berries, and for the kids to have fun in it.

Every time we suggest taking something out our garden helpers wince. We then get into a pattern of not asking them to help with something they feel is a loss to a fairly complete and thought through garden. Moving isn't an option and it surely isn't unreasonable to want a garden to evolve to meet the owner's needs?

I think I just have to jump in and start making mistakes, but where do you start when you are completely ignorant and it feels as though any change is picking at a thread which starts a whole ball of wool unravelling and/or tantamount to chucking the kids' poster paint at the Mona Lisa?

What do you want for your kids in the garden? Can you reclaim one area to start with and make that child-friendly?

Hi @StroppyTop, thank you for replying. We did create a barked area for our kids around an apple tree which has a sandpit and they love. It's quite a distance from the house though and not visible from our windows, and somehow just reinforces that the rest of the planting isn't child friendly. Everything is dark and has shiny leaves. We have big firs which are too dark and dominant.

I did recently take my courage in my hands and have one fir removed. It nearly caused a big fight with our helpers, but is so much better. It's that that has inspired me to want to dig out some of the shrubs and see if we can grow berries, vegetables and herbs in their place. This would also be a big help with the cost of living.

Longer term my real dream would be to let some of the lawn go wild under shade trees, but I don't want to plant trees until I feel a bit more confident about how to do it and what goes where.

Can you bear to show us a picture?
I LOVE a bit of garden planning, especially someone else’s!

Even a diagram would help.
which way does it face?

Bunny Guiness wrote a lovely book about making gardens family-friendly. Maybe you could get it from the library for some inspiration?

why not start with the bits nearest the house and work from there. So what do you have near the house? a patio? a bit of lawn? too many shrubs? Try to make a space about the size of a big room which has stuff you will actually enjoy and is easy to access from the kitchen or living room. put lawn in the middle and some flowers around the edges - maybe roses or other flowering shrubs. Make sure you include a nice bench or somewhere for the adults to sit and have a cup of tea.

Do some thinking and reading now and then get planting in the autumn after we've had some good rain. Once you've got your first space near the house to work, then you can move on to the next space etc.

The difficulty is in two parts a) not upsetting the people who help you and b) making the garden how you want it to be.
a good bit of time and energy spent on persuading them to your point of view /thinking it was their idea might help with the second part?

Who are your helpers? Do they own part of the garden or something?

This sounds great! Will try and track it down.

It feels like it :-)

They are my parents, who are unbelievably kind with childcare and other support and generally really laid back. They would never come around without being invited for example, or express an opinion without being asked. My mum has a great eye, and so we rely on her all of the time for things like fabric choices and where pictures should go.

I guess the problem is that they are pretty much full-time gardeners in their own lovely garden and so if they want a blackberry bush, they find the perfect little space for one behind a pond, growing up a wall and next to ten other things while maintaining a mature garden around it. They have more pots than Staffordshire.

I don't think I can garden like that as a beginner. I already killed things like rhubarb this year by forgetting where they were.

I know speckled laurel isn't very exciting but it is fairly kid-proof. Are yours at an age yet where they are kicking a football about and destroying the garden?

see if we can grow berries, vegetables and herbs
Berries and vegetables will need to be protected from animals trying to eat them (before you can!) Herbs are most usefully sited near the kitchen.

let some of the lawn go wild under shade trees
Grass and trees don't really mix - they both steal goodness (light, water, nutrients) off each other.

But, yes, take ownership of your garden. It's yours, not the previous owner's nor green-fingered family's.

@N0RKS This is a great idea but unfortunately what I have been trying to do for three or four years. My mum always says they don't have the capacity to help with changes, which is fair enough, but then I don't feel I can do anything.

She has suggested we hire a garden designer and landscaper, both of which are totally out of budget.

I sort of feel I have to start myself, if only to make a mess of things, feel guilty when things die and gradually get the hang of it.

This is good advice, thank you. It might explain why we are struggling actually, in that we have a very big and hot/dominant raised patio which creates a barrier between house and garden, and with a 4 foot drop to the lawn/pond. It's then another big gap to any beds or plantable areas, so much so that I can't easily water from the house.

The patio is organised around a big semi-formal water feature with shrubs around it, which blocks the view of the garden and I dislike.

If I cleared that out, I would have the kind of starting space you describe in a place where I could give it daily attention with the kids.

Thank you to everyone for advice so far! I should have thought of a diagram/pictures, but will add first thing tomorrow 😃

Is the house entirely yours, or do they own some of it?
Are they close by/next door type thing?

Would they go along with changes that you suggest, if they don't do the work? Do you want/need their help to maintain the next iteration of the garden?

A visual would be so helpful.

Try and see your garden in zones/rooms and work out a plan for each zone.

patio- near the house, so pots of herbs and cut and come again salad leaves makes sense. Also consider planting some perennial shrubs in pots for prettiness too. We like pittosporum and hydrangeas in pots. Easy to grow too!

raised beds for veg- grow what you will eat. And have it near a water source. Also grown things your children will like to harvest like peas and radishes.

soft fruits need netting and some care and plenty of sun- pick a sunny spot for them, and just do afew. They are hard work!

I know it is the wrong time to talk about it , but either a second tap or a FRANKENHOSE ( we have one that is two lengths joined together) which winds up onto a hose reel mounted to a wall will solve the watering problem. I would go for a second tap if there is any way that can happen. Life is so much easier when the water comes to you.

“Semi formal water feature” makes me shudder.
that needs to GO (sold?)

I am a wildlife gardener, so a pond is always a good thing. I deliberately leave scruffy areas as habitats, am gradually reducing the amount of lawn, and everything has to have a function for nature, so bee friendly plants, lots of fruit trees, lots of shade

The feeling I am getting is that you would like to relaxxxxx the garden, give it some softer edges, less formal planting, more space for nature? Is that it?

soft fruits need netting and some care and plenty of sun- pick a sunny spot for them, and just do afew. They are hard work! That’s not my experience. I grow raspberries, loganberries, tayberries, alpine strawberries and a few garden strawberries in pots. I find they take very little care - pruning/tying in or repotting once a year - and no netting. I also have redcurrants which I leave for the birds, along with the rowan berries. The birds also get some of the apples.

I’m trying to reduce pots. They need watering, daily in summer. If you want pots on the patio, I’d kill two birds with one stone and fill them with herbs. Leave the ornamentals in the ground.

when your children get older, private spaces and dens in the bushes will come into their own. I moved the climbing frame off the lawn and under a tree in the “woodland” and it was swarming with children way into their teenage years, though by then it was a convenient sitting place rather than a pirate ship.