Tell B&Q about your unloved garden - £150 giftcard to be won NOW CLOSED

[KatieBMumsnet]

As you may have seen already, we're working with B&Q, who so far have helped 20 MNers revamp their unloved gardens - soon you'll be able to check out the video of their revamps. MNers have also been posting their before and after pics of gardens they've transformed here so do check out this thread for Mumsnetter garden makeovers!

Now, we'd love to hear from other MNers who might have an unloved garden of their own. Do you have a lawn that's more of a jungle? A window box that's a little bit weathered? Or a patio that's seen better days?

Tell us what makes your garden so unloved for a chance to win a £150 giftcard from B&Q. What do you want to change about it? Maybe you'd like to put down some decking or just get some new plants? What has stopped you from changing your garden?

Everyone who shares their unloved garden stories here will be entered into a prize draw to win a £150 B&Q giftcard.

Please note that any comments you post here may appear on the B&Q pages on Mumsnet and potentially elsewhere.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw
MNHQ

The garden of our nice new home
Is looking rather sad
If only we could sit out in it
It would make us rather glad

The lawn is full of dandelions
Come to think of it so's the patio
The slabs are really wonky
It looks so very tatty, oh!

I don't have green fingers
I really find gardening a pain
I weeded once, who knew?
You have to do it again!

My garden's a mess
So is my poem
So make me happy
I promise I'll get hoe-ing

My garden is on the verge of being a jungle. One part of it was set aside over a year ago to be turned into a patio. It is now brambles and bindweed with a few nettles thrown in for good measure. We ran out of time, funds and man power, as fil decided it should be grassed over, therefore wouldn't help. It's the only place in the garden that we can put our huge and heavy patio table to catch the sun so at the moment in not enjoying the sight of a sunny jungle!!

My lovely son has ambitions to be an archaeologist and asked me if he could do a 'dig' in my garden. Thinking he would give the borders a little dig over and get rid of some weeds, I agreed.
An hour later I looked out of the window. Half the neighbourhood kids were in my garden with spades and buckets. The hole extended halfway across the lawn and was at least a foot deep!
The 'finds' included bits of brick and stones and old coke cans left by the builders.

I would like to win the vouchers to restore my lawn!!

I am only the 4th guardian of my 'garden on a hill' in its 80 years of existence. I'm told it was a bank of conifers in its infancy, then was landscaped 70 years ago with a lot of drystone walling, which is still holding firm (I've learnt how to rebuild the occasional collapsed section!) . Over the years it has seen an overgrown shrubbery turned to lawn, climbing frames, 3m wide 'paddling' pools, a trampoline... the well-established shrubs have been repeatedly cut back and a vegetable patch established, but 'the bank' (ah, the bank!) has to date defied taming and sits in full view of my kitchen window, full of self-seeded whatsits, A 'garden voucher' prize would just the thing to kickstart Project Bank Transformation!

My unloved garden is courtesy of the council housing officer promising to fix it when I signed my tenancy and then going back on her word. It's taken me 8 years of fighting to get them to rotivate it, but after that... it'll just be a 4m wide, 20ish m long strip....

I have no spare funds, really, to make a "big" impact - I'd like to add a little seating area, bbq and borders... nothing too special - I'd make £150 stretch far!

I haven't used the garden for the 8 years I've lived here - we moved in to second storey weeds and thistle bushes (yes, really) and only this summer are we getting it rotivated...

It needs help - I need help!

oh I'd like to add a little allotment area at the end too...

Our garden is small, and pretty unloved though not through lack of trying.

We've got uneven and sloping grass, I don't know what was here before these houses were built 8 years ago but we have a lot of weeds in the grass, big dock leaves and thistles. We've dug up, weed killered but still they come back. We've decided we'd need to completely dig up the grass, level it out and lay turf or grass seed to get decent grass.

We've spruced it up with lots of hanging baskets, empty jam jars and tea lights, bunting and stuff but its like making a silk purse out of a sows ear

Our "lawn" transformed itself into a dandelion carpet this year, and I think the whole thing needs to be dug up and reseeded. Meanwhile are there any hungry rabbits out there?

Our garden is mostly decking that was laid before we bought the house, however the previous owner just laid the decking.... they did not put in the posts for the sides that I believe are meant to be done first, there is no fencing around the 1 foot drop which is handy for kids to fall off and it weirdly stops about a foot from the fence on one side. I would love to have the skills to cut it back and fence it in and clear the nettle jungle and put some grass down for the kids, maybe even a trampoline set into the ground and I fantasise about screening the fence so no-one can see in and getting a shed for all the garden toys, bikes etc. The only thing we have managed to do is replace the gate after burglers destroyed it last year while breaking into the house while we were sleeping in it.

I now know that I need a new law mower.....and a power washer for the stones. Please send me the £150 B&Q voucher MNHQ

Our garden is awful and currently resembles a jungle...a slopey jungle. The borders need to be completely re-done and they're overrun with weeds at the moment. There are brambles and the grass is in need of a good mow but the lawnmower is currently on the fritz. In fact, the grass probably just needs to be dug up and to start again. We don't have a fence between our garden and the neighbouring one as we have been quoted £1500 by two different people (our garden is not very big by any means!) and we just cannot afford that at the moment, though we are saving up.

The wall between our other neighbours needs the rest of it painting. Eventually we would love to put in some decking at the top as the stairs from the back door are steep and a bit dangerous for the children. We would also like some raised beds and to just really make our garden a nice environment that the children can play in and to grow some of our own vegetables, which they would love.

We have had terrible problems with anti social neighbours and have not used our back garden much over the last 6 months. I would love to screen our garden from their constant watching of me and get some peace and solitude for my family.

We have a plain grassed garden, I'd love to add either a patio or decking to give the dd's somewhere to play in winter and to make a nice seating area for bbqs etc. it would be lovely to be able to bundle them up and let them play out on their bikes and scooters throughout winter, the grass gets too waterlogged and like a quagmire as our garden is surrounded by trees and is in shade for a lot of the time.

Children and and lack of time - they are the two biggest enemies of my garden! That's why I have some bald patches where I had to rip out shrubs to acccommodate a large trampoline and a lot of our veggies ended up wilting or being eaten by snails. However we really do enjoy it still and even my 5 year old DS just being able to eat one bean that's grown on the whole plant makes it worthwhile. Luckily the majority of our garden is made up of plants of the just keep under control variety.

We have a nice sized garden now, not too big, or two small.we recently took a wooden shed down because it was about to fall down, the previous tenant had put it up a decade ago.
There is now a huge mess from where it stood, and we really need some nice slabs or something to go in its place.we have a 10 month old baby who is desperate to get outside and explore, but he can't, its not safe, he has to stay In his pram and watch from the window :(

I would love to revamp my grandparents unloved garden that was once very much loved. The flower beds are now empty and the roof of the shed fell in causing it to become a giant compost bin for leaves...
Stopping is health and time but if they were lucky enough to win then lots of window boxes and pots of colourful plants would breathe life and love back into it.

Our garden(s) (both front & back) are in desperate need of a make-over and our toddlers are unable to play out in them

We had a major house flood a while back which was caused by a water main pipe burst in the street and it broke the sewerage pipes, which in turn completely killed our grass, soil and contained levels of contamination

My hubby has been trying for a while now to re-vamp the gardens, back to their original state, but is struggling as he suffered a Stroke not long ago and this is taking him much longer than expected, also with us both out of work now due to this, our funds won't permit for a nice garden

This really would be a Godsend to us and would put the smile back on our boys' faces knowing they can play out in this beautiful weather again!

Our garden has always been "serviceable" in so far as the grass has been short enough for dd to play on and the patio has been clear. That is until this year when because of underpinning the garden looks like a cross between an abandoned building site and a jungle. I'm so envious of our neighbour who has a beautiful garden and embarrassed now seeing as our garden is worse than the one next door after he seems to have discovered a love of digging and pruning after 10 years of neglect.

The decking the previous owners put in (think Ground Force style), was nailed in, including over the sewage man hole cover, which will need removing the entire thing if we ever need to access this. There are weeds galore underneath this decking, that no weed killer seems to touch. The decking itself is prone to be very slippy in the winter and nothing seems to stop this.

The lawn has become less grass and more clover, weeds and ant farms.

The flower beds are now so full of weeds, that it is impossible to see the plants that remained after the previous owners stole all the nicest onces and left lovely holes.

And we have had to remove the dying box hedge out the front, and this has left a lovely trench but yet to have funds to replace with something more robust, longer lasting and nice looking.

Finally the fence door to the back garden has been warped and battered by the winds over the last few years, the catch has been completely bust and basically the whole thing needs replacing.

Not completely unloved as DH has created a lawn, grown a hedge, and made two ponds. So, very wildlife friendly - lots of bird boxes too
But I went to a friend's garden party the other day and it was over-flowing with beautiful, colourful flowers - mainly in hanging baskets and tubs.
So I'd like to show our garden more love by planting some beautiful flowers. A little colour would transform it !

The reason that I have a rubbish tip/jungle instead of a garden now is that the estate residents overlooking/bordering my garden used my garden as a dumping ground :( within about a year of me living here. It was a lovely garden before that, but after numerous broken and smashed TV's, microwaves, video recorders, tumble dryer doors , vacuum cleaners, used condoms, urine filled bottles (I could go on) being thrown over and me paying out four times to have it cleared (approximately £1200), I gave up.
Now though, I get less thrown over and I'd love to see Dd playing out there. Ds is 15 and has never played out there despite living here all his life :(
I dream of sitting out there with a glass of wine in the summer.
£150, would be a massive help, so fingers crossed.

When we moved into our house two months ago the garden hadn't been touched for at least two years.

The grass was taller than me, and it was surrounded by jungle.

So far I have cut the grass, and dug our two sunloungers and three old Christmas trees - and filled two garden waste bins twice over!

I have also uncovered a pond with a waterfall and some lovely raised flower beds - and found no end of plants I never knew we had (still not all identified!)

I'd love to paint up the old decking and get the water feature working, and plant some grass seeds in the part of the garden that was buried under a pile of old trees and twigs, and £150 would be a great help towards this!

I would love our garden to be pretty,
So I'm writing B&Q this ditty.
I haven't met it's needs,
So it's now full of weeds.
A project not for the faint hearted.

But instead I want roses,
With sweet scent in our noses.
Maybe decking and seating
My enthusiasm isn't fleeting.
I just need a bit of help to get started.

My garden. Actually scratch that. Yard. Is unloved and a complete eyesore. Worst of all, living in a terraced house it's completely looked over by all angles by our neighbours. The shame . We've been in our house 4 years and in that time other stuff has just took priority, we didn't spent too much time in the garden to start with and we've not had the time or spare money to sort it. The winters have took its toll on the yard so with dd1 now here I want to make it into a nice safe area for her to toddle about in and also so I can spend some time outside with her without looking at the mess it is and end up back inside. It's something we plan to sort next spring/summer (house has been a doer upperer and we've done 1 room a year)

So. What I'd do.
The 3 walls need repointing. That's DH job
Then I would paint it with white masonry paint to brighten it up
I'd get a new back gate. It's all rotten and every time we go in or out a new chunk of wood falls off. It's all jagged on the top and its come off one hinge. So when we've got that I'd paint it a bright colour too. Maybe purple
I'd get a new shed. We only need a small one cos of space but the one we have at the moment you have to be careful where you stand Cos it's a matter if time till you go through the floor
Rather than get new paving stones I'm going to copy some of our neighbours and get it astro turfed
I'd get a bench or some form of seating
I'd get a box for under the kitchen window for some flowers
I'd get a box/netting for some climbers on our side wall
I'd get a couple of planter tubs so they are out of the dogs way and he doesn't dig it all up
And last of all as we have to keep our bin and recycling bins in the yard rather than back alley I'd try and build or find some storage so they are out of sight

Ambitious but will make it a much more usable and pleasant space

My garden is my favourite place on earth sometimes. It has a large surface pond, and I get it tidied once a year to prepare it for the winter. My landlady is fab, often sending the gardeners herself, but she is removing the pond this year as it is too much to clean/maintain.

Sadly I don't think she's aiming to replace it with anything, and the birds in the area love coming to the garden to bath and to drink.

If I were to get £150 I would get a small water feature that they could enjoy, and drink from.