Gardeners' Chat

[MmePoppySeedDefage]

Chat. For gardeners. About gardening, but we can go off piste and chat about things like non-gardening clothes, or food or whatever, without being told off

It's impossible to say without knowing what you're requiring. But that sounds like a crazy amount of money for landscaping. Does that include all plants, soil etc too? Are there structures included in that?

Yes, that is supposed to be inclusive of plants, soil etc. But we’re not looking for structures, as we already have a garden room/office and would be renewing the half shed/half greenhouse anyway. Maybe it would include a pergola or something along those lines, but I haven’t requested one or anything.

Do you think it’s not even in the right ballpark on price?

Ooh garden chat.

I'm in the middle of redoing my veg plot, after taking down the manky polytunnel that was here and trying to relevel the ground to meet the actual lay of the land after moving here 18 months ago. I was ill for a while during my main planting out period and even had to let my OH water my seedlings for a week (eek).

So now I'm planting out by prepping one square meter at a time. I still have loads of spuds to go in but the first batch will be due to be harvested soon.

We're in France for info, and this should all have been done a month ago. At least.

The conversation about resin and block paving was for a drive on a slope (front of the house , where you put the car) .
there is another few mentions of patio paving that some posters need.
For the drive the honeycomb would work.

@Britinme I did my drive a few years back and now looking to do an extra patio, so mentioned different products for those different situations.

@WellTidy - I think that's absurd to the extent that the person quoting it either a) doesn't want the job or b) is scamming.

If you have mature shrubs/plants, surely you'd be better off with a design that you could do in stages. There are plenty of people who could come up with a design for a reasonable cost that you could then execute over a couple of years.

There used to be a TV programme about garden design where people had huge jobs done that cost maybe a quarter of that amount.

All construction work is extortionate at the moment, both labour costs and material costs are high, but that isn't a massive garden. Unless you've requested a really high spec on everything and lots of extremely expensive mature plants with lots of water and lighting etc then to me it sounds eye wateringly expensive.

@WellTidy that sounds an awful lot of money but not impossible to spend in having the whole garden redone if what you require is the highest quality.
ie initially I wanted Italian porcelain paving with a wood effect, absolutely stunning, but that is currently £50 to £100 per square meter depending on the look or quality if you have many sq meters you can do the sums plus all the material you need for under and for laying it, much more expensive than natural stone.
Now I am choosing a porcelain that is £36 sq/mt to get the cost done, it looks good but not stunning…
Wooden sleepers are very high on price too, more expensive than bricks if you are looking to use in certain places , but it looks a lot better imo
if you are bringing all the soil, that is very expensive too.
Plants are crazy expensive at the moment, a small shrub/tree can be 100s or 1000s of £££ depending on how mature it is.
I would ask for a breakdown in the costs so you can see where you are spending more money and see if you can find alternative material/plants to bring the cost down. Also, you need 3 quotes ideally for a big job like that.
Maybe you find that you can save a few 1000s with less planting, that then you add the following year? Or choose a slightly cheaper material?
But of course it depends how much you want to compromise in the final look, but I am sure it can look stunning still if you make a few changes.

I concur with the others @WellTidy - that quote sounds insanely expensive.

The pavers we've chosen to go with our brick work out at $6 a square meter (they don't use meters here so I rounded it up a little and multiplied by nine to get a figure from square feet. It works out at $4k just for the pavers.

We recently (last year) had our entire patio redone for just over £4k. We did reuse the existing Indian Sandstone, as it was really good quality, very thick, but laid very badly in the first instance. So just shy of 100sqm, dig up existing, remove old sublayer. Re-lay, and add brick edging and a step. Pea shingle to all the edges. New back gate, and new front gate post. Price included all materials, labour and VAT in Surrey.

That was a really low price though for that size patio.

@WednesdaysPlaits Yes. Bless them. Father and son team just starting out. I think they wish they had charged more! We did in fact give them a completion bonus because it was really hard work, and it took double the time they thought.

We've been renovating a derelict property for 2yrs. The garden had 20+yrs of overgrowth- brambles, ivy like tree trunks and random shrubs. Its now cleared- but its a clay bog. During that time I grew a vast amount of veg in pots, but am now starting on a veggie patch.

I've used the gardeners world forum for advice. If anyone knows any companies to get good top soil/vegetable soil in the south east- please let me know 😀

@HazelTheGreenWitch wool is starting to be used in packaging these days, mainly for mail order meat, and we get it when we order deli-type stuff. I either use it in the garden or stuff it into a suet block feeder for the birds to take.

Interesting that others have lost Penstemon and Agapanthus, losses of those are two I'm seeing dying a lot of after last winter. I suspect there will be a lot of re-planting going on so will get some in while they're available. Still, the roses liked the cold spell.

Cleavers! They're going berserk around here! Same with ground elder and bindweed.

Ooh! A garden thread.

I picked up a wisteria seed and planted it. After a month of nothing I dug it up and popped it in a glass of water, it's now sprouting! I'm so excited.

I was given a pack of Brussels sprout seeds and told to grow them. I've now got about 6 seedlings....that have just stalled. Assuming they do grow bigger, I'm going to put them in pots? I'm not even that keen on sprouts, but a gauntlet was thrown down.

My garden is very heavy clay. Just ordered some relatively inexpensive metal raised beds from Thompson & Morgan. Obviously, have to level the earth where we're putting them but should they have some sort of foundation? Row of bricks, anything?

Thanks for your views - I will definitely talk to other designers to see what they estimate. We wouldn’t be willing to spend that amount of money, even if it was spread over different phases, but I would really like to improve the garden and we are willing to spend money to do that.

The estimate did include removing what we currently have - patio, raised beds, steps etc - all of which are crumbling in front of us and won’t last much longer. And I agree that costs are increasing hugely at the moment!

Happy to spend some more time daydreaming about the perfect garden and warmer weather …

@IcakethereforeIam with putting sprouts in pots, I'd be concerned that they'd keep blowing over. Unless the pots are quite big and heavy.

In my old house I had a go at vermiculture for a few years, and I must say it does produce excellent peat-free compost as well as using up a lot of veggie trimmings and newspaper. However, being an American house we had a basement to keep the boxes in out of view which might not work in a lot of British houses.

@Tricyrtis2022 I'd not thought of that. I've got pots I grew tomatillos in which are quite wide but I don't think deep enough. If I get the raised beds set up, I would have put them there but I was worried the soil mix wouldn't have settled I've got enough plants (hopefully) to experiment though.

Here’s a view of the roses framing my bedroom window. Dianthus and cineraria are also in bloom.

I‘be had my whole garden scraped this week ready for the New GardenTM. We were initially quoted £15k for a 72m^2 patio, in porcelain, but the whole garden was just eye-wateringly expensive - and we hadn’t asked for that - so we are down to sandstone now for £11k. Which still seems a lot to me but honestly I am boring myself at the moment banging on about the costs of everything, from bills to butter. It probably is just a stupid time to do renovations (but we really really need it)

Thank you for the figures, folks - the paved bit of our patio will be about 60 square meters and the brick bit another 27. I think we may have to settle for having the prep done this autumn and the patio laid next spring. We can't get anything done until September at the earliest anyway because all landscapers are fully booked around here. I'd like to stick with the lady who came on Monday if possible as she did next door's patio three years ago and it still looks great although it was a tricky one that had to go flush up against the concrete edge of their swimming pool (which occupies the large majority of their back yard, and why anybody bothers with a swimming pool in Maine where it's only warm enough to use it for about four months of the year escapes me).

Hi,

I bought a bird feeder for my front garden today. We’ve got a choice of two locations- which would be best?

a, in between two medium fushia bushes in the boarder
b, in the middle of the small lawn?

In our experience, the birds prefer good cover when they are feeding so I'd avoid the middle of an open space. Hanging under tree branches is good, or from a large shrub. Out of the reach of cats ideally. What types of bird do you have or do you hope to have visit?