B&Q Unloved Gardens feedback thread. Non-testers: add your unloved garden comments - £150 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

This thread is for the 20 Mumsnetters who have been chosen by B&Q to revamp their unloved garden.

Those selected have been sent a B&Q giftcard to buy the things they need to give their unloved garden a makeover. They're working to complete the makeover by the 28th, and will be keeping us up-to-date on how their revamps are going on this thread as well as posting photos.

Please do follow their stories and add your own comments if you want to show some support!

Below are the questions we'd like testers to answer but please feel free to add your own comments too. Please give us a bit of info about the garden you're revamping and what you plan to do with it in your response.

• Why is your unloved garden unloved? What do you want to change about it? What has stopped you until now?
• Where did you get your inspiration for doing up the garden from? What sort of style are you going for etc?
• Have you had much help along the way with the revamp? If so, who from? And what sort of help - practical or ideas-based?
• How did you find your shopping experience at B&Q? Were the staff helpful? Did you find anything in store you maybe didn't expect to beforehand?
• Did you use any of the help and advice that B&Q offer? This includes their videos on YouTube, leaflets and classes in store etc. If so, how useful was that help and advice?
• If B&Q could do anything more to help you next time you visit, what would it be?
• Have you had any feedback on what you've done with the garden from family/friends? Has the transformation had a big impact on you and/or your family?

If you're not an official tester but would like to be in with a chance of winning a £150 B&Q giftcard, please post on this thread to tell us about your own garden revamp successes (or failures!) - we'd love to hear from all MNers who have a garden makeover story to share!

Thanks very much
MNHQ

ok, I have found an old picture of our garden of what our garden looked like when we moved in. We cut down the dandelions, and put down some turf, but that's it

this is before we started

and this is now

Well done everyone! We should all be proud of ourselves, they all look gorgeous.

And, thank you Mumsnet and B&Q, we would never have sorted it out without this push.

Shall we have an ongoing garden thread? For us to keep up with it?

Thanks Terra! It's been raining really heavily in the NE so we've been thwarted in doing as much as we hoped

Wow, I love your new garden lissie and that view is stunning. Our garden overlooks over other back gardens, with no view to speak of iyswim.

Bet we see your garden pictures on the website soon :)

Babies, thank you, that's very kind. The view is amazing, even in the winter. You should see it when its all frosty! The field is also protected land, so it'll never be built on. There's also a "family" of hawks living there. We moved here from a rundown, built up estate in telford, and it was the best decision we ever made.

Apart from the bloody noisy sheep

Haughty we were right behind you trying to finish. We've had total catastrophe with flooding (which was supposed to have been previously fixed) overwhelming what we?d done and threatening the rear of the house (previously flooded out) and have had to pull everything apart to sort it out, and then bodge it back together, which was a bit disheartening and very worrying, but it looks like it'll all be ok, if slightly different, so are limping in very late hoping to be updating video's this evening and photo's tomorrow morning and actually getting to read the rest of the thread and look at the recent pictures properly!
(What we've been able to look at quickly looks great!)

Ds toe is very badly bruised but thankfully not broken, and he's now wearing the steel toe caps he was brought!

Things got very surreal when we dashed of to Frien Barnet B+Q (which we didn?t know existed before!) to buy extra boards to cover up the bodge, only to discover the card wrongly showed zero balance!

We wondered if any balance on the cards was cleared off on Sunday night, (anyone else spent any balance since Sunday?) but as far as they could work out the Edmonton store that was having computer problems, accidently wiped the cards balance!

Initially we were told we?d have to return there to get it sorted out, at which point I explained the whole situation to Justin, including our borrowed recording devices and it?s owner needing it back and a set time for uploading videos.
Hats off both to him and especially Mike the store manager, who did all they could and some more to sort it out, and while things didn?t work out time wise, as we had to return recording devices (which we?re now waiting to get back to update here) it could all have been a lot worse and without Mike?s specific intervention, it would have been, so a huge thank you for keeping us in the game.

I can also now add two more products I wasn?t aware of, sold by B+Q:

FloPlast 80mm x 25m coil land drainage pipe! (Huge thanks to both B+Q staff and two lovely customers Ben and Mike, for coming up with a solution we could bodge together to save the day!)
This is a grey water dispersal pipe, may you never need one, but if you do, it?s there, it?s affordable and it works! (We?ve had more heavy rain here, and it looks like this has fixed the issue)

Spotted briefly at Frien Barnet, but with no time to properly investigate: A bio ethanol table fire!
Back later hopefully.

Ta Da!

Finished!

I
am
so
chuffed!

(and knackered)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

And this is what I started with (plus the shed which had already gone).

Haughty, that looks fantastic!

Been too busy to do regular updates, but now done! Photos below.

I hesitate to be unkind, as i have appreciated the financial help, but I think in the interests of being honest rather than complimentary, I don't rate B&Qs service or products or prices very highly in comparison with some other retailers that I've visited recently.

The customer service at my local branch (Alfreton) was pretty non existent. Plenty of staff, but many different ways of saying no, we can't help you.

I have a disability that means that I sometimes use a crutch - on my last visit, staff let me struggle lifting large plants, pots etc through the checkout. On my second visit, three checkout staff had a conversation between themselves while serving and didn't acknowledge me until it was time to pay.

The plant quality was patchy, and the prices are high for the products, although I have found that they are really quick to sling plants in the discount section when they start looking a bit neglected, so I did get a couple of bargains to balance out my spending.

I've much preferred the quality and style of garden products at Homebase when I was at one of their stores recently. On the whole, I don't usually shop for garden stuff at big chains because its overpriced compared with smaller garden centres and I don't think this has changed my mind much.

Anyway, I love what you've all done, lovely ideas. Here's how mine ended up...

Lot tidier!

Purple.

Woweee everyone. What AMAZING gardens you've hot now :)

I'm having technological difficulties. My laptop has died

I'm going to take my work one home tonight and try to finish off my updates

I love the purple Virgo.

Non-tester here, just wanting to share my garden tragedy!

O.h and I moved into our house a year and a half ago. We have an annoyingly horrible hill/ rise at the back of the garden which we absolutely hate. O.h decided to go all "Alan Tichmarsh" on it and dig up all the grass on the whole rise in order to turn it into a veggie patch for our daughter.

A year and a half on, it's still a boarded off mud hill and I want to cry every time I see it. The soil is not good for growing veg and it looks like we're going to have to turf back over it. Such an eye sore.

Really loving looking at the garden transformations on here, I wish my garden could undergo a bit of a reconstruction with some TLC!

We have moved into our new home and weed killed everything possible. Luckily we have decking and gravel in most places so now just need to keep on top of the huge conifers and bit of grass at the front.