Hello from Kent

Hello and welcome Bob.

No, sorry, not a chance of this working, like Sheal said. Lolimac's plan is good, and I can add to that one.

How hard can you work?

Here's what I did when I had the same problem:

I dug all of the soil in in the area that I wanted to plant. From the base of the base of the leylandii trees to about 4 ft out, and all the way along (about 30ft), and to a depth of about 3ft.

All of the excavated soil was piled on the lawn, which would be a bad idea normally but my lawn was stuffed anyway, so I figured I'd sort that next.

Naturally I was hindered by a lot of tree roots, including some proper beefy ones, which I had to saw through then manually tear out.

By this point in the day it got quite funny. My garden at the time had no divider between me and the next door neighbour, other than a path which marked the boundary. It had to be this way because of the layout of the properties. He had to walk across my patio to get to his house. Good job we became good friends Anyway, there's me, drenched in sweat, not that you could see it through the mud that was stuck all over me from head to foot, standing in a 3ft deep trench with a spade in my hand, just able to peep over the top of the mound of excavated earth, when the old boy from next door came home. His remark was so subtly that it still cracks me up now. He looked at me, and calmly asked "oh, is the war back on then?"

Anyway, having done all this, I then stapled some plastic weed fabric along the bottom of the trees, and let it trail into my trench. More layers of this stuff were used to effectively line the bottom of the whole trench. I deliberately left the top few inches at the base of the trees stay above ground for a completely unrelated reason, which was that there was bindweed next door the other way, and I'd spend a year eradicating it from my garden and didn't want it to sneak back in undetected. I then back filled the whole thing. The soil was pretty poor having been robbed of everything by the leylandii over the years, so I mixed several sacks of well rotted manure into the top few inches.

Robbing a significant chunk of the roots off the leylandii, as I did, sounds harsh, but I figured that as the trees were kept at about 5ft tall (they were closer to 30ft when I moved in, my dad and I cut them down to size), they would still have enough roots left to support themselves, and besides, next door the other way (not the old boy) didn't give a stuff about their garden so I figured the leylandii may as well compete with their bindweed for nutrients.

It worked. Prior to this back breaking project I'd tried several times to get stuff to grow there. Nothing would. Not even stuff that is supposed to be happy in harsh conditions like yarrow. After that I managed to establish a pretty successful flower and herb bed which even featured some notoriously fussy plants.

 

Welcome

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Thanks for your input I will be out with the spade next week and get started on the trench.

 

Welcome to GC, Robert

Do take a nosey around the Beginners Forum because, when I joined, it became fundamental reading. In some instances, what I *thought* I wanted went out of the window because some of the ideas in there were far more inspired and do-able for a novice (me!). Oh and make thorough use of our "search" facility too (that was hours of my life engulfed in "search" but with not one minute of it wasted )

And don't be afraid to mention if you want something in the "Wanted" section either: GC'ers are the most helpful, knowledgeable, friendly and generous hearted folk I have ever (and I've been on the net for a long time now! So, I do mean EVER) had the good fortune to stumble over. And that goes for in real life too (Admins weed out the ... pernicious 'weeds' that spring up on here from time to time ).

Now to the basics:-

• Which way does your garden 'face'? (East, West, South, North?)
• What type of soil do you have? (I think I know the answer to this one, and it's heavy clay: yes?)
• What dimensions is it?
• If it were your ideal garden, what would it have within it?
• What theme of planting do you most like? Cottage garden style? Modern? Exotic? (yes, I have read that you are considering a shrub border, but what about the overall look/composition?)
• Which colours are you most drawn toward?
• What will you use your garden for?
• How much time (or little) do you have to put into your garden? An hour per week/month or day?
• Do you have pictures you can post of the whole garden? (that way the gardening folk can advise on plants that would be in proportion to the entire plot)
• Is your garden, or any part of it, subject to waterlogging?
• Are you still reading, or have you lost the will to live?

The more we know, the more you can sow and grow and avoid disappointment (and potentially, needless expense - of time, energy and £'s!)