New Home, New Garden for a Novice

[TallulahToo]

Okay, so I never thought I'd post on here for advice as I have never had pretentions of being remotely talented in this area.

But we recently moved into a new build home with a south facing garden, shaded by the fence at the very bottom but otherwise in full sun and we would love to make it into a lovely retreat for the whole family to enjoy. (DD4 and DS8 came too complete with trampoline and sandpit).

It measures approx L.9m x W. 5m and needs some sort of patio area building in so will hopefully be not too big for us to manage.

Where do we begin? Novice is a term we use lightly, really we're more vestal virgin like in our gardening as we really have never grown more than a few daffs in pots.

Are there any ready planned gardens available on line? Or books we should buy or does anyone have a few starter points for us - even if it's just a "What you should never do is...." sort of pointer. We would welcome them all...

Went to a gardening talk recently and got some really good advice about testing your soil so you don't waste any time/money putting the wrong things in the wrong place.

Needless to say I still haven't tested mine and not sure how to do it. Local garden centre kit??

I would go to your library and grab a simple gardening book that appeals to you in content and style and go from there!

Firstly, do nothing. Sounds strange but live with the garden first. Work out where the sun is over the next couple of months or so. Have a look at your soil. Often with new builds you'll find a layer of builder's rubble six or so inches below the surface. Think about improving the soil before you plant anything. It'll save time and money in the long run.

Then get some books out from the library. There should be lots of advice in those.

Gardener's world magazine gives advice on planning gardens and the new series on Friday nights is starting soon. They've just relocated gardens so they'll be planting from scratch. There'll be tons of advice for you.

Go online and find out about gardens open to the public near you via the 'Yellow book' scheme. Visit as many as you can. I guarantee that you'll be overwhelmed with ideas for your garden when you see what other people have done in theirs.

Finally, if you do decide to do some planting soon, go to a nursery and ask for some advice. Plants can be very fussy and if you don't get the right advice you'll end up with expensive mistakes.

Good luck.

garden designers are very cheap at the moment!
first thing to decide is what you want/need. Trampoline + nice hard surface area to sit in sun/eat out. Then are you into flowers? veg? grass? Somewhere to hang washing? where can you put outdoor stuff - need a shed? interested in grass?

There are billions of books but mostly veg at the moment, and lots of very pretentious stuff.

Have a look at this here

enjoy

We moved 4 years ago to our first place with a garden. I've found Titchmarsh's The Gardener's Year really helpful with a month by month guide on what you should be doing. RHS do good basic guides too. It's been great fun learning how to garden!

Oooh thanks so far...

Okay so I have rubble not too far below the very poor turf that they charged a fortune for and the soil does seem "sticky and heavy" if that makes sense! So, what's the best and most economical way to sort this out first. Should have mentioned that the builders left it with quite a slope at the bottom end of the garden and I'd like to either 2-tier it or level it all out if it can be done cheaply using outside labour (DH is very busy and unlikely to have time free to do this himself).

We have been watching the sun and shade situation over the past week or two when we had some lovely weather. We seem to be genuinely in full-sun for almost the entire day except some shading at the bottom end. (may be a place for the children to play here?)

We'd love a nice seperate terrace / patio area surrounded by pots or raised beds.

I love flower gardens and use lots of herbs in cooking but would like suggestions for some good structural (not too big) ever-greens that maybe also come in different shades of green or red etc.

Are there any nice looking arbours or benches we could buy for the shady part and what plants would you put there?

Can anyone recommend paving stones to use for the patio? (House is made of bricks in a terrocotta colour with hints of black-grey speckled in every few courses).