Anybody else feel a little despondent with their garden( forever dealing with weeds and plant casualties)?

[GreenTr1ck]

Every spring it’s a battle and quite desponding particularly when you look around online, at the gardens of green fingered friends and at Monty’s perfect loamy soil.

Is there anyway to stop them taking over from winter?

Also I keep having casualties. Trees and roses seem to do ok but I struggle with climbers and seem to find other casualties every spring.

Is this normal or am I just the opposite of green fingers. There is always so much to do too!

Every spring, after I’ve finished winter pruning, I start going through the garden from end to end, weeding, tying back. By mid April all is going well, and I think “This year I will finally be on top of it”. By mid May it has got away from me completely.

Casualties aren’t a problem. Think of them as planting opportunities. They’ll be increasingly valuable the longer you have the garden.

Try to focus on the process not the end results. Gardening should be enjoyable.

That’s really good advice, thankyou!😊

Me too OP. My garden is ovverun with borage, which I thought we'd got rid of last year.

Nope! The bastards are back with a vengeance and seem to have doubled in size. At least the bees like it!

You have to keep on top of it I find, spend a few minutes every couple of days and pick out the weeds quickly, otherwise they start spreading seeds.

In winter if its not raining but cold I'll spend 20 mins picking out weeds once a week which helps.

I've tried clemantis and 4 plants died on me i don't bother anymore I tried other plants and they seemed to thrive. My roses on other hand loving it so maybe they are more hardy.

I have alot of perennial plants they always come back year after year seem to survive better.

You have to know your soil type, doesn’t matter how good you are some plants refuse to come back next year if the soil type is wrong. Are you selecting plants that would normally do well in your soil? Saying this, lavender should thrive where I am but they all hate me and die!!

Yes I seem to do better with roses and not so much with clematis which is odd and slightly frustrating as I really need some climbers. I’ve killed 2 Montanas and a Armandii.😫Who does that? I thought Montana were supposed to be pretty indestructible. Bizarrely managed to get a wisteria going and flowering.

The other thing I’m struggling with is grass growing into beds!

Mine just seems like constant hard work maintenance, especially at this time of year. I’ve spent today removing moss, weeds and mind your own business from our crumbling walls, paths and patio. Sweeping again and again. Emptying the trug. Moaning about my back 😂

Im hoping to finish that tomorrow.

I long for a modern patio and new paths.

Next jobs will be re-weeding and then sanding down and teak oiling the table and arms of the chairs (can’t be bothered to do the whole chairs).

Having one final go at growing pumpkins from seed this year. Last 3 years we've had only male flowers - no female - then the plant withers and dies without fruit. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

If it makes you feel any better - I’ve spent today digging stones out from my crappy lawn. I must have more stones than a Japanese zen garden. Maybe by next weekend I’ll have unearthed enough so I can put down seed to cover the bare patches.

I also need to nuke the bastard thistles that thrive on my crappy stoney soil.

Sounds like a good excuse to go shopping for some lovely climbing roses!

My DH and his family are keen gardeners. They would never say "it's done" always "it's getting there". What I've learned is that gardening is the opposite of, say, redecorating a room where you put all the money and hard work in and then just have to clean and maintain. Gardening is a forever project. We have front and back gardens and my retired DH probably works the equivalent of 3 to 4 full days on it weekly. Rainy times are hard as he still needs to get out there in order to keep on top of it. It's a beautiful thing, but plants die, get to big, need to be moved, something attacks a treasure thing, etc., but it's beautiful what he's created.

I'm still waiting for most of the back garden to emerge from the water it has been under since October. This year, my tool of choice will be a JCB to dig bigger ditches. Gardening is evolution, there's always something that needs addressing and it can be trial and error.

Taking the rough with the smooth is a gardening must. I’ve killed two clematis this year already. The stems are ludicrously fragile, I broke them at the base. Worse, they’re the successors to the one I accidentally cut through last summer. Three times. It died.

Meh. C’est la vie. I don’t spend too much on a single plant, recommend to save heartache. I am getting a climbing rose now.

Cheer up OP - plants dying (I mean naturally, not just cos I’m around) is a proper part of gardening - you need to find out what likes your garden and what doesn’t.

Google helps, but there’s only one truly reliable way. The more you persevere, the more perfection you’ll end up with. Little and often is the way forward. No effort is wasted.

Yep I know the feeling op. I have ground elder that seems to be taking over the world. Ivy babies and lemon balm everywhere else. Lost a couple of really nice climbers. I have a couple of spaces I’ve ‘allowed’ my DH (who has shit ideas) to grow something but he hasn’t ’got around to it’ so gaping bald spots, bare earth and bare fences where I was hoping there would be emerging trees and shrubs by now… at least the garden is still a haven from what is happening on the TV news!

The other thing I’m struggling with is grass growing into beds! You need an edging strip between grass and beds, then the stolons are easier to see and remove.

If the grass isn’t necessary, consider removing it. My area of small beds became far easier to maintain when I replaced the grass paths by gravel.

My problem is bindweed. It's everywhere!

Indeed. Apparently my grass prefers to grow in the beds than the lawn itself despite properly installed everedge etc.

This is embarrassing as this is also what I do for a job but I'm embodying the 'shoemaker's child ' approach

I feel the clematis pain. I have big fences that need covering.

Onto year 3 of replacing dead clematis.