New build garden, im hopeless and need some advice desperately.

[rosieposey]

Ok any advice gratefully recieved sorry for the longish post but i really dont know who else to ask for advice.

We moved into a new build 3 months ago the garden is rectangular being approx 10 meters across and 7 in depth so not that big really. They laid turf down for us which because of all of the snow just only now seems too be knitting and less squishy. Its major problem i think is that fact that it slopes slightly, not terribly but enough to notice.

The problem is i have no idea what to do with it, I dont know what to plant (we have a small dog, cat and 13 month old as well as 3 teenagers) and we have to have a shed (as no gargage) as well as room for our large 10 seater table (there are loads of us if we eat outside!) and i havent got a clue what to do and where to put anything. We are really on a limited budget and probably couldnt afford decking (not to mention i dont think i want decking) but obviously need a hard surface to put the large table and chairs on as well as the shed. What about gravel/shingle with a plastic membrane underneath? would that work?

We also have the problem of looking straight onto a large brick wall at the bottom of the garden (the side of our neighbours house) and its about metres in height - if perhaps i put the table and chairs in the far left hand corner of the garden and the shed in the near left hand corner how does that sound?

Ok well i havent got a clue about gardening/plants or design but i am really hoping and would be so grateful if anyone had any ideas, its an ugly rectangle of grass with a massive brick wall the other side of the bottom fence - it needs some serious help and i cant spend more than about £500 as we have the shed to buy as well.

TIA

Sorry just read my post back and saw that i didnt put the height of the side of our neighbours house - its a huge 15 or so metres high so if i could maybe plant a nice couple of trees down there or something (they do have a side access path between our fence at the bottom of our garden and the side of their house so i guess nothing that overhung too much) and i forgot to say that with regards to the sloping our garden slopes downwards to the bottom of the garden.

Haven't got any real advice, i'm equally useless, but [http://www.housetohome.co.uk/articles/advice/planning/Garden_planner_147908.html this planner]] is fantastic, there is also general advice and pics of other peoples gardens on the site!!

dont know what happened there try this here

aaarrgghh try searching house to home garden planner!!!!

I'm a VERY basic gardener but heres my take ..

You need a tree
We have a silver birch which is tall but not to spready.

I don't like decking (too slippery) paving stones are good (lay on sand/cement mix)

Couple of bushes (hebe/spirula that sort of thing)

Don't go to mad to start with if you're not a keen gardener

And remember pots look great but need constant watering (and the 13 month old will take great delight in digging out the soil)

Maybe dig out a small area and let your little un plant some easy seeds (they do special childrens packs with marigolds etc)

Also depends on what sun the garden gets.

No point planting sunflowers in a chilly north facing garden etc...

On a roll now...

We planted clematis (a flowering climber) and trained it up bare fences.

We had similar years ago in a new build garden. It was landscaped and had 'shape' and snrubs but was boring and we wanted a patio area. There were already some paving slabs laid by the builder so we wanted to continue those and spoke to a few neighbours who wanted to do the same and we managed to order the same slabs between those of us who wanted them and then we helped our neighbours lay their patio and they helped with ours. It was a great way to get to know people.

For quick impact I bought a couple of packets of "English cottage garden" seeds and sprinkled them around the existing beds. They looked great when they came up.

Oh - our sloped as well so we ended up putting in a few steps. Can't remember how hard that was. I may have blocked it out!

Ahh bless you all some great ideas there!

I was thinking about silver birches already - maybe three across the bottom of the garden they look so pretty when they are grown.

Jack will have a look at some clematis as there is a brick wall going down the right hand side of the garden - i wanted to put a swing seat/love seat there to face the sun but not much hope as the garden is too slopey - will have to find somewhere to put it at the bottom i think. We have a west facing garden but obviously with that hulking great side of a house at the bottom of it it gets sunshine only really near the house.

Buda when i say i cant do gardening i mean i have no idea whatsoever! To make a bed in order to plant seeds i just dig up the turf around the edges right? The only problem is i remember all the crap that the builder left underneath our turf so will "English cottage garden" seeds grow in such crap soil?

Mrsticklemouse thanks for that - will give it a go but as i said i am truly crap. My dad was an amazing gardener and did courses in horticulture at Bicton college in Devon - sadly i have inherited none of his tenacity for gardening and keeping plants alive and as he is sadly passed on i cant ask him to sort this rather terrible garden out!

Jack i bought some flowers in pretty pots last year to brighten up our patio in our old house (much bigger garden but again bare and ugly due to my crappness at growing things) i was determined to keep them alive but i kept forgetting to water them and they all died they cost alot too so wont be making that mistake again!

Can you plant in April/Maytime? I am not sure but would love to see something growing especially as its our first summer here.

Stick geraniums in the redundant pots
They need hardly any water.

You'll probably need to get some topsoil for flowerbeds.

April/May perfect time for planting.

Start improving soil now. Ours was crap too. Lots of builders rubble. Buy some topsoil and compost and work out where you want your beds and dig them out. Great exercise!

What direction does your garden face?
Work this out before you decide where to put your patio (get a compass if needs be).

A group of three Birch would really soften the brick wall at the end, as well as some climbers, but the climers you choose should depend on how sunny/shady it is.

This is a good website for ideas and info
www.shootgardening.co.uk/

Also I always suggest borrowing gardening books from you local library for ideas and inspiration.

Pannacotta my garden faces west and there is a fence at the end of my garden then a very narrow path then a huge side of next doors house - all brickwork with no window, i was hoping the birches would grow fairly tall and like you say soften the view from our french doors and kitchen.

Lukcy you, west is the best aspect IMO, esp if you like the evening sun (our garden also faces West).
Given this your best spot for a patio is outside the house, so you get the afternoon/evening sun.

Yes the Birch will grow tall, they are fast growing as well so even if you get small trees they will get away fast. They tend to look best lplanted in groups of 3 or 5, almost like a mini copse. If you buy now you can get them bare root (dug up from the field) which is cheaper than buying container grown trees. Have a look here, really good prices for Birch and the nursery has an excellent reuptaion, am about to put in an order
www.weasdale.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=304&category_id =3&manufacturerid=0&option=comvirtuemart&Itemid=26

Re the big expanse of brick wall, does this face East?

There is a small patio just outside our french windows in the living room directly outside of our house. I didnt want the table and chairs to be positioned outside the house as the huge umbrella will look a bit rubbish unless its away from the house iyswim. I think that putting the table and chairs at the bottom of the garden on the left hand side then the trees in the middle at the bottom of the garden then some sort of love seat/small archway with trellis so that you can grow climbers up over it in the right hand corner. I will have to either put all of this on patio slabs or gravel/shingle though and im not sure which will be best really?

Thanks for the link Pannacotta i will have a look at that nursery.

The expanse of brick wall does face east but like i said it isnt ours and we have no access to it as it is just the other side of a fence at the bottom of our garden. Im not sure about what the sun will do as when it sets in the evening it will probably be behind that house right at the bottom of our garden.

Shingle would be much cheaper though not a great surface for a table and chairs as it moves around. Concrete slabs are cheap and much more stable but you need to lay them properly.

You could grow some tall shrubs in front of the brick wall, somthing like this which is evergreen, lovely catkins in winter and will get quite tall in time

www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/shrubs/garrya-elliptica-james-roof/itemno.PL00002738/

Bamboo is another option to soften the brick wall.

Thats a very pretty shrub, the only problem with slabs that i can see is that DH and i are very inexperienced at this and given that the garden slopes down to the bottom we will have to literally dig into the lawn upwards. I thought with the shingle that if we laid down a membrane - put holes in for drainage, then put the shingle on top but varying in thickness according to where the slope is to even it out? At the bottom of the garden next to the fence the most shingle then getting thinner the further up the garden we go (maybe about 3ish metres).

I know its not great for a table but at least it will enable us to have a stable surface to put it onto i suppose, just wish i knew a bit more about gardens - i love looking at them just am a bit useless at planning one

If you have a slope like that I wouldn't go for shingle. In fact I wouldn't anyway as it moves about and takes a bit of looking after to stay looking nice and in the right place!

Hi Rosie

I'm afraid I really don't think your shingle idea would work at all, especially not for having a table and chairs. The shingle moves around a lot under your feet, and so it wouldn't give a stable surface - you'd just have everyone wobbling around all the time. You can get a slightly more stable shingle by digging out the area, filling with hardcore, and then putting shingle down, but this still isn't ideal, and if you're doing all this work you might as well do more work and lay patio slabs. I think that you'd be better off with the existing turf than with poorly-laid shingle. Plus your cat will poo in the shingle.

A shed can't go onto shingle at all, as far as I know, especially on a slope. It just won't be solid.

I know that you say that you and your DH have never done any slab laying before, but my DH and I did it at our previous home, with guidance from DH's dad, and it was fine. Hard work, time-consuming but fine!

You say you're on a limited budget, but we found that we could get a much more expensive look by having a mix of mock terracotta concrete slabs (cheap) and genuine handmade clay bricks (not cheap, but we didn't need many), and laying them in a well-thought out pattern. If you had a look on freecycle, you might find some people giving away interesting and potentially useful paving materials.

I think that if I were you, I'd live with what I've got for a while, have the table and chairs on the lawn, and save up to do a proper job on the garden. I'm worried that the alternative will involve you spending money on something that is actually a step backwards and could even devalue your house should you need to sell.

Sorry this isn't very positive! I agree with Pannacotta on the trees and shrubs.

Thanks once again for all of the advice - it is greatly appreciated.

If it was going to put a patio down and it was going to be at the bottom of the garden (as there isnt really anywhere else for it to go) im worried about drainage as all of the water will pool at the bottom of the garden on the patio and around the table and chairs iyswim.

I think maybe you are right - we are going to have to spend some slightly more serious money and im not sure when we will be able to get it done - we had the table on our grass at our last house and it was ruined sadly

Not really sure other than raised decking (it will at least i suppose address the sloping issue) what else we could do.

Think carefully about putting the patio at the bottom of the garden - it can be a pain when you have to keep nipping back to the house to get things you've forgotten. If you're worried about drainage, you could dig a sump at the bottom of the garden - basically a ditch filled with gravel, so that the water will drain away more quickly. I'm sure you could find instructions online. Also, look online for details of porous paving materials, as they ease the problem of water run-off.

Yes, for flower beds you just need to remove some turf. If the turf has been laid on top of builder's rubbish (which it quite often is on new houses) you can either heave it all out or, if you can't face it, annuals grown from seed should be fine because they don't produce big roots and will cope. Otherwise, you could make raised beds but they are pretty permanent so you have to be sure you won't want to move them.

Look at the Royal Horticultural Society and BBC gardening websites for ideas.

Thank you trowel - i really cant think where else to put the patio if im honest, the gardens width is longer than the length so its not that far out of the kitchen through the utility room down the side path and into the garden, there is no access from the kitchen directly into the garden so its a bit of a trek either way really.

I will have a look at some of the sites suggested on here although DH and myself talked about paying for a garden designer and then doing the work ourselves.

rosie some designers offer a postal design service which is cheaper.
You can address drainage as Trowel says, you can put in a soakaway or level the ground where the paving is.
Might be worth getting some quotes for a patio and seeing what the landscpaers suggest re drainage.

I do think if your garden faces West you are better off with the patio close to the house, could you have it to one side, if you dont want to see the table and chairs from inside?

Ohhh i wondered panacotta if there were any online ones - i had a look but couldnt see any at all.

The trouble with the patio going next to the house means it will be at the top end of the garden and therefore the top of the incline, not sure how we will get the slabs to go straight and not slope downwards - am sounding really clueless now but thats basically what i am. I suppose to flatten the garden out at the top end will mean taking the turf up then building it up till it is even but that will mean a step off the patio onto the grass probably - i think that a garden designer is probably going to be our only option - have seen a local one who does a full design service for £400 and a budget one £150 but you get the drawings of where everything goes with the more expensive one - its out of our budget so may go for the cheaper one if i cant find anyone else online at least we will get an idea of what we are doing i think?

Yes you can do something known as cut and fill which is what you descibe and yes it may mean a step down from the patio or a step down from the house, or you could put borders around most of the patio and lose the slope in those.

I would suggest asking some good local landscapers round to have a look and price it up before committing to a garden designer. They are the ones who build (rather than simply design) gardens and will have dealt with many sloping plots before and often can come up with good solutions.

We used a garden designer as we inherited a nightmare plot (which also slopes) but she didnt cover any of the levels in her rather expensive design.