Best way to clear a neglected garden before planting

[Onionsalad]

How would you tackle this? We're moving and the garden has been so neglected.

We want to put plants in when the weeds are clear.
TIA

It is weeds or lots of overgrown shrubs?

We've moved and some of the beds are a total mess and we have been working our way around pruning things right back or removing things we don't think are salvageable. I think it's going to take a while.

For overgrown lawns maybe a petrol trimmer to bring it down before mowing. Weedy beds probably lots of digging....or trample and put cardboard on top then mulch or bark on top of that.

If it's anything like my next door neighbour's overgrown mess, I would happily pay someone to come and clear it! (Think: tangled mess of thorns that makes Harry Potter's Forbidden Forest look like a pretty garden...).

Strim as much of the overgrown areas as you can, and either treat it with weedkiller, dig up weeds, or cover with cardboard that is weighed down for a few months. If there are overgrown shrubs/hedges/trees, look at cutting them back into some sort of order. Check that they haven't damaged your fencing, especially if you have pets.

You might need to bulk buy compost and manure if the soil quality is poor, to encourage the worms to get going again. Alternatively, someone I know is a big advocate for "chicken tractoring", i.e. letting chickens loose to scratch up the earth, and enrich the soil with their manure... but they are feathered dinosaurs who will need penning in, if you wish to have any flowers left!

It takes a lot of time and patience!

If you can take a long view then cover areas with old bed linen (or anything permeable really) pinned down with tent pegs. This is effectively free to do and a year later you will have weed free ground and happy earthworms. I have done this several times, it's not very attractive but it's probably the least damaging method.

Thank you all. Lots of useful tips.

This is what it looks like.

Well at least it isn't a huge 6 foot high bramble patch worthy of Sleeping Beauty's castle!

The weeds do look mostly like dandelions. I'd be inclined to spot-weed them with Roundup. Whatever you do, don't use a rotavator while there are perennial weeds with long tap roots still there. The rotavator just chops them up into handy sized pieces which all then grow as even more weeds.

Thank you.

Rather than using toxic stuff to kill them, not good for the environment or for you, get a long thin tool with a forked end, it is easy and satisfying to get up dandelions with it, you just poke it in and then push the handle back. I had hundreds of dandelions and this keeps them down.

I was just looking at them today.

We had a similar amount of dandelions when we moved into our house. I sent the kids out with one of the long handled weed grubbers and paid them £1 for each bucket full of weeds collected. Easiest gardening I’ve ever done and there were no dandelions the following year. Win win.

Excellent idea 🤣

If it was me I'd do a basic hack back and trim the shrubs, then cover the lot in cardboard (thinking you might have plenty of empty moving boxes?!) and a good thick layer of composted bark, at least 10 cm - plenty of companies will deliver in bulk, assuming access is reasonable and budget allows. Excluding the light should kill off most weeds and the bark will steadily get incorporated into your soil as the cardboard breaks down, improving its structure and leaving you with a blank canvas for planting, a new lawn, whatever.

I guess the downside is it makes it less of a usable space in the interim, but for me I'd take the short term pain for the long term gain rather than try to weed all that by hand!

Too late to plant much this year.

I'd glyphodsate (RoundUp) at a reasonable strength then cover with tarps until the winter to get rid of everything.

Dig and rake over the winter and then plant next spring.

Our garden has run away with us a bit.

We are tackling it one area / bed at a time as it feels more doable.
So we pick an area, clear it (strimmer & weed), add compost, plant and mulch.

That way we are more motivated, it doesn't seem so hard to do, and we get the hit of achievement faster.

Should have said, my preferred approach is based on being unwilling to use weedkillers due to risks to health and the environment. YMMV!

We have a lot of pots and tubs in our present yard and will take them so the cardboard/mulch idea sounds feasible. There's some in that garden too. Plus I have a lot of bed slats I'm going to make into a raised bed.

Feeling a bit more positive now 😊 Thanks everyone.

If you use cardboard or cloths to kill the weeds, it sounds fine but you are going to have to wait ages before you can enjoy the garden. Using a long weed remover won't be as effective as a spot weedkiller. So if you want to plant sooner rather than later than later, use the weed killer or dig the patch over with a garden fork and remove the weeds as you go.

There will be thousands of weed seeds in the soil so you will need to be meticulous about weeding for some years to come. Once you've cleared the ground, hoe the ground weekly and leave small seedlings on the surface to shrivel and die. If you put in plants right after digging, be especially careful to remove seedlings close to them. Lift the foliage to spot emerging weeds and remove with a hand fork. Again, you can leave them on the soil surface to dry and die.

Make a plan of how you want the garden to be, where there will be paths and flowerbeds before you plant anything.

Have you checked what is under the top layer? It wouldn't surprise me if the dandelions were growing on some paving, gravel or weed membrane as it looks suspiciously flat.

No but you have a point. We're getting the keys soon.
Thanks @Jellybean23 that's very useful information.
I'll update and take pics as we go.
It's a small garden. The front is established shrubs. There's a conifer in that. A friend said she'd definitely get rid of that. It isn't big though and doesn't block light.

Get keys this weekend 😊

There's a small ish conifer in the front small garden. Would any of you remove this? __

Yes definitely. Conifers block sun and aren’t even that attractive! There are much nicer trees you can get

This is the front. Very small and full of shrubs.

@Istheworldmadorisitme you were right about slabs. Plus a lot of gravel.

I'll take more pics when we next go. Probably be Tuesday?

I would take a spade and try to dig a hole to see what there is under the gravel, how far it goes and so on.

You may need a digger.

Be careful of the cardboard mulch idea if you are in a high cat population area.

I went down this route for my garden and it has now been taken over as the neighborhood litter tray. There stench is so bad it is unusable.

I will be covering the area i have already done, with cardboard, compost and bark chippings, with another layer of cardboard and sadly there ready of the garden will be nuked with glyphosphate, so that the dead roots maintain their network in the soil and i will only dig pockets where required for the plants to avoid disturbing too much soil.

I'm gutted and so angry with people with multiple cats.

I will plant it very densely so hopefully after a few years it will be impenetrable to sh*tting cats. But I'll also have to spend more time and money on pathing rather than having bark or gravel paths too.