What to do with this mess?

[whippetreal]

Our front garden is looking quite straggly. We haven't had the time or inclination to tackle it since moving in. It's north facing and the hedge in the front is 6 foot tall. The tree is a big magnolia. Theres a weed membrane under some of it and the soil seems to have a lot of rubble. Last autumn there were hollyhocks out there last and 3 big butterfly bushes in front of the window I took the photo from. Obviously a lot of weeds too.

First question- how do I tidy it up? What tools do you use to get everything out? Im not attached to any of the plants (except the tree and hedge) and want to get it back to a clean slate. I assume I need something to hack at the soil but what's that called?

Second question- what would you plant? I was thinking of ferns and snowdrops but don't know what else tolerates the shade well. Could hydrangeas work? The bit on the left goes from 2m wide to about 80cm wide at the narrowest point. The bit by the hedge is 1m deep.

I usually go at a job like that with a garden fork. You can get reasonably deep into the ground with not a huge amount of effort, turn it over, and pick out everything you want to get rid of until you've got some bare earth. It's just grunt work but quite pleasurable if you like gardening (well I like it).You'll lose the weed membrane but you can always replace it.

What's the soil like do you know? And how shaded is it, does it get any sun? Hydrangeas are pretty tolerant, may well be a good shout along with the ferns and snowdrops. I never plant bulbs I planted a load once and got nothing so it's put me off! But for all I know snowdrops would do well there.
I'm no expert as I'm sure you can tell!

This kinda thing. Cheap as chips.
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Gardens always look a bit ropey at this time of year. That’s why everyone has daffodils to distract the eye

I would tend not to clear it all back unless you have couch grass or ground elder and need to get roots out. Clear soil invites weeds. I would clear just enough to plant each thing that you put in.

Have a look at Helleborus. Their advantage is that they have adapted leaves called bracts surrounding the tiny flowers, so what looks like the petals (but is actually the bracts) last for months, even until the seed pods have developed and ripened. And their leaves will act as a nice counterpoint to the ferns

Hellebores are gorgeous! (And @MereDintofPandiculation knows waaaay more about gardening than I do so take her advice rather than mine, I just wanted to kick off the discussion.) 😁
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Clear soil invites weeds

And cats .. "Ooooh ready made toilet , thanks "

I love magnolia trees but they are beautiful for such a short time in flower then messy little blighters when they shed their petals ..

I've had a wander around a few garden centres. Luckily it was the first sunny day in weeks. I've bought two hydrangea "strong Annabelle" and one "limelight". I think we'll put those on the left hand side. Next door is a bungalow so that patch gets a few hours of evening sunlight and thanks to the driveway and a main road, a few hours of morning light before the sun goes over the house (IIRC, we haven't had much sun since moving in).

I've also bought some evergreen ferns, 3 small ones and 2 medium sized ones (eventually should get to 80cm and 60cm).l to put under the tree. I can't remember the types, I left DH to choose them. I love ostrich ferns so I'll have to wait a couple of months until they're being sold and stick them in between. The only snowdrops I could find were quite expensive but I bought some white hellebores in B&M- 3 for £12.

With not having clear soil- do you mean I should leave the existing weeds and wait for the plants to grow in? Or should I clear all the weeds, plant, cover in compost and then cover in bark? The only neighbourhood cats are mine but they stick to our back garden (and I'd rather they used our garden as litter tray than the neighbours). We have bindweed and ivy coming over the fence on the left but the couch grass is all in the back garden (which is a massive project we have yet to tackle!)

I'd wait if I were you. If ours is anything to go by, the soil will be far too wet and claggy to weed at the moment, and there could be all sorts of lovely things in that bed just waiting to pop up and surprise you. Give it another three or four weeks at least.

Sadly, no good surprises to come. We've been here since last August. Apart from weeds, there are only hollyhocks, buddleia and a few small clumps of ornamental grass in the bit on the left and weeds under the tree. There are Spanish bluebells and daffodils in front of the window just below where I took the photo. Last autumn I tackled that bit and added more bulbs with a hand trowel but it was hard work. I couldn't get out a budddleia or a few of the hollyhocks so they'll be back again soon.

Get a long handled bulb planter, one that is diagonal so it can cut in. Get lots of summer bulbs Morrisons sell some very cheaply. In autumn plant loads of spring bulbs, get snowdrops just now and plant in the green. Everyone's gardens are a mess just now. If you want grass you can still plant bulbs through it. My garden looks amazing just now but the grass is always awful but I don't care about that. Just plant what you love. I'm jealous of your hollyhocks. Dobbies have offers on perrenisl cottage garden plants. I bought some peachy foxglove may be next yr before it flowers but I have others that romp through the garden and I love them. Never grow in same place twice. Also bought large daisy plants. Good luck and enjoy.

With not having clear soil- do you mean I should leave the existing weeds and wait for the plants to grow in? Or should I clear all the weeds, plant, cover in compost and then cover in bark? If it were me - and this is not necessarily what you should do - I’d clear anything I’d identified and didn’t like, and I’d clear an area around anything I was planting.

I don’t pull up anything I don’t recognise. I have a lot of nice surprises that way. I don’t know what the ground cover plant is in your first photo, I can’t recognise it from the photo. I’d wait till I knew what that was before getting rid.

I wouldnt mulch with both compost and bark. One or the other, probably bark if I didn’t have home made compost, and I would weed before mulching.

You can't go wrong with a viburnum, in my opinion. Easy peasy shrub.

You want to dig out the soil
At the hedges give the soil more compost, then if you can get non treated wood and then build a barrier so that pests can't get into the hedge after that do a slash and burn of the brambles if they are inside the hedgerow.

If it's Ivy that's easier to just pullout with a fork or strong gardening gloves they usually
Cost £14-£15.

Add sand or stones if it's acidic soil , otherwise if you have trouble with slugs those blue pills can also destroy them there's also vinegar that can also attract as a deterrent.

The first thing I'd do is rip out that ivy. Horrible stuff! I did our garden by hand during lockdown, as it had got out of control. It's not come back as bad again and I pull out any regrowth as I see it.

Something I've done with my garden, front and back, and totally by accident (!) is to have a different plant flowering or having berries throughout the years. So the primroses, mini daffs and snowdrops (though the latter are dying off now), couple of witch hazels. Magnolia, cherry and apple trees will bloom next. The mahonia still has some blooms and will have berries. I basically dug up a lot of my plants from our last house (new owners didn't want them anyway and we didn't decimate the place!) and had to plant them quickly - it all survived! Stranvaesia is a good one because it has lovely pink/cream/green leaves all year round. It also flowers and the bees go mad for them! Forest flames are also a nice option, as the leaves flame up in Spring and they also have white flowers. I also have buddleia, couple of Japanese maples which are lovely and I don't think they need a lot of sun (?) - mine certainly don't get it!

I also add colour in summer with summer bedding plants in pots. You could have some nice pots on the paved part of your garden.

Which one? There’s lots of them!

Add sand or stones if it's acidic soil , otherwise if you have trouble with slugs those blue pills can also destroy them there's also vinegar that can also attract as a deterrent. Ferric phosphate ones are less of a threat to other wildlife and pets than the metaldehyde ones.

Thanks all you've given me lots of useful ideas!

I'm not a fan of ivy but I know it's good for birds so I'm always torn. I think we'll cut it back and try to keep on top of it from now on (as well as the bindweed). We can't remove the ivy completely as it's not in our garden. We're on a main road and the left is a garden on the corner belonging to the first house on the side road. I can't complain too much, their patch of shrubs and trees give us so much privacy we don't need to worry about closing the curtains in the evenings.

@MereDintofPandiculation I'm not sure what the ground cover is and just assumed it was a weed. It's hard to tell because I was still in my pyjamas and taking the photo from the living room window 🤣. I'll focus on getting the new things in for now. I bought a long handled hoe yesterday so I'm already more prepared. The tricky bit is trying not to pull up the weed membrane which is only a few centimetres below the soil or not below it at all in some patches. I wish it wasn't there.

@Brightredtulips I never knew hollyhocks were something to envy! They were a self seeded gift from the house to the right. I'd rather we got his verbena bonariensis or California poppies.

MereDintofPandiculation, I think mine are Eve Price. Hypericum are also good value, cope well with heat and drought and produce lovely yellow flowers.

I wish it wasn't there. You could always dig it up and throw it away! If it's got plants growing on top of it, it's not doing its job. Idea is to have it on top, then a fairly inert covering, eg bark, so seeds don't want to grow in it. But eventually what's on top will breakdown into soil, and that's what's happened to you. I'm not a fan of permanent weed membrane, but I'm probably going against popular opinion here. I don't like regular jobs (like removing the mulch over a weed membrane periodically and replacing it with something that hasn't broken down into soil), and I do like weeding, getting down amongst the plants and seeing things I don't usually notice.

Eve Price is a variety of Viburnum tinus. There are many other species of the genus Viburnum - V x bodnantense which is the highly fragrant one which flowers on bare stems in the winter, V x carlesii, another highly scented one, V opulus, our native Guelder Rose, and V opulus sterile, the Snowball tree, V lanata, our native Wayfaring tree, V farreri, V. plicatum, V. davidii to name just a few. A wonderful genus of shrubs, but all with their own requirements..

Likewise Hypericum is a genus with several species. You're probably talking about Rose of Sharon, H calycinum, tough as old boots with big yellow flowers, but you also may mean V androsaemum, smaller yellow flowers followed by black berries and with wonderful autumn colour, neither of which are the Hypericum which is used for depression, and there are a lot of smaller hypericums including H elodes which grows on the margins of ponds and wouldn't be at all happy with drought.

Sorry, I'm not meaning to get at you although it must seem like that, It's bad enough remembering the latin genus name without memorising the species name as well. But it's always good to remember that just because one species of a genus does well in a particular spot in your garden, it doesn't mean to say another species in that genus will do equally well in the same sort of spot. It's a hazard of having so many species available to us!

@MereDintofPandiculation you've just explained one of the greatest mysteries of gardening to me! I think I've only seen weed membrane that was badly maintained. I've always wondered what the point was when birds and the wind drop seeds on top. It's because I've only seen it with soil (now I'm guessing bark that's turned to soil) and weeds growing on top anyway.

My last garden was very heavy clay and rubble so i dumped a lot of compost on top every autumn and spring, just leaving the worms to do their magic. Over the years it improved to the point I could dig in mid summer if I ever needed to. So I've always preferred a bit of hand weeding and lots of compost rather than covering soil up.

@whippetreal I reckon 5 years mulching is enough to turn clay soil into beautiful dark humus rich soil. And regular mulching makes it much easier to pull the weeds up.

I agree with @MereDintofPandiculation about weed membranes. I love weeding. A membrane limits what I can do, and I regularly add old horse manure to the garden, so it really wouldn't work for me