Exhausted and getting nowhere. PLEASE come and tell me there's an easier way to clear an overgrown garden

[PeachesMcLean]

I've spent one hour digging out about about a square metre of it and there's masses still to go.I've think I've taken on too much.

Grass in all the beds, brambles creaping through, some weird tuberous weed everywhere. I've just hacked out a small tree. the lawn is full of dandelions. There's a huge berberis to get rid of. Ivy everywhere. Various overgrown shrubs. Need new patio and overall garden needs some shape putting into it. it's got one of those dreaded paths right up the middle which has to go (very 1960s)

We can't afford to just get someone in. But there's got to be an easier way. Please? Anyone?

i used a strimmer to clear most of it, cut it as low as possible. have dug up bramble roots and netter roots.

For instance, do I need to actually dig out all the grass from the beds (which I have been doing). Can I not just turn it over and it'll die?

Just realised the time. So that's more like 2 hours clearing one tiny patch.

Glysophate or whatever its called. 1 year. Then start. I have friends with a 70ft garden that was waist high in weeds and brambles and they had two very young children at the time. Glysophate was the only thing they could do (could not afford paid help either). 5 years on and they have a spectacular garden with water features and seating areas and everything.

If you can't bear glysophate, then strim (hire an industrial one for a day) cover the lot with black plastic pinned down. Wait a year.

Trust me, I'm a gardener. But also a gardener with little children and a house to run and meals to cook and laundry to do. There is NOT ENOUGH TIME.

So glysophate kills everything? I think I've heard of that but it's the waiting the year afterwards to replant anything that put me off. Though who am I kidding? At this rate I won't have a garden fit for new plants for a year anyway.

Also, use a fork instead of a spade when digging- much easier and breaks the soil up around the roots of the weeds.

I had two overgrown borders - one I did myself, I started like you did getting every last bit of weeds out, but I found that by the time I'd got ten feet along, the weeds were growing back on the first bit.
So I chopped it down roughly, dug up what I could & covered it in plastic, as eekamoose suggested.
The second border had some manky shrubs a dead tree & lots of undergrowth - I let my teenage son loose on it & he chopped everything down to ground level, but I kind of lost heart before I started on the digging, at which point I hired a gardener. She suggested that I turn that border into lawn & she first of all strimmed it all down, then scattered grass seed - she's gone on sowing & mowing & it's now definitely beginning to look like lawn.

You spray it on the leaves, Peaches. The plant takes it in and down to the roots, which kills them. Obviously it is not an organic method, but it is not so horrifically chemical that it does lasting damage to the soil. It is contained within the plants themselves (I believe).

Do you have a patio? Plant up a load of pots for the summer on the patio. Will give you something to love and care for while the rest of the garden looks awful for a year.

Right, thanks all, i've decided to take out the few small plants that seem worthy of rescuing, put them in pots and kill the rest with glyphosate. The big shrubs can be hacked back which is satisfying than digging I guess. In the meantime, I'm going to get quotes for the new patio which is needed. DH and i can dig up the existing one and we'll just pay labout to get the new one put down. At least that way, I might feel I'm doing something worth while.

Just got to decide what to do with the blessed path now. I need something to follow the washing line, but don't know what yet...

We had a similar problem & 3 years down the line,are only just getting on top of it.Our problem was compounded by having Japanese Knotweed in there to,so we couldn't go digging stuff out in case we spread it around.

Glyhosate is not as bad as Sodium chloride,Triplocyr or other chemicals,for the environment,as it is deactivated as it hits the soil.So in theory,once the weeds are dead,you could replant.I don't like using chemicals,but sometimes there are no alternatives.

I make my living as a gardener & after battling other peoples weed problems ect all day,the last thing I felt like doing,was starting again in my own garden,which is another reason it has taken so long.

Good luck.