Clearing Overgrown Garden - Advice Needed

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the forum and a novice when it comes to gardening. But I have a fairly big project required to clear my garden and create something that I can actually spend time in.

I've owned my property for 12 years and it originally had a lovely garden, nicely laid out and a good size - with a small lawn, pebbled area for a barbecue and some flowers and plants growing. However, I let the garden get a little bit overgrown one year and shortly after I rented the place out as I had relocated. Because the garden wasn't in great shape (although at that stage probably just needed a good trim) I didn't even bother advertising it as part of the rental, and because the garden is secluded and you don't see it from the property or go through it then it was quite easy for it to be left to grow.

Fast-forward over 7 years and I'm now back living at the property. I had hoped maybe the tenant would have taken it upon herself to tend to the garden (not that it was her problem though) but it had been left for all that time to grow into a jungle.

When I first returned it was about 6ft high, trees, plants - you name it. A few months ago I hacked into it and managed to get it to a low level of weeds and growth - but I'm still left with massive challenges.

I'm not going to go into detailed discussing about what I could do with the garden long term, at this stage I want some advice on how I just give myself a blank canvas - so to speak. My plan was to get to the point of it just being a flat bed of soil (or close enough) so I could then start working on top. However when I hacked away to the bottom of the weeds and growth there was just no way of digging into the weeds/plants or whatever it is that has gone wild.

I went at it with a fork for a few hours and got pretty much nowhere, the ground was almost completely taken over by roots/weeds/plants (I don't even know what the main stuff is, someone can maybe tell me from the pics below).

As you can see from the photos it's started growing again since I hacked it all down, so I want to get stuck into it ASAP. I have some free time next week and I'm happy to get my hands dirty and put in some hard work.

The things I'm lacking is knowledge and the funding for professionals to come and do the work for me.

So where do I begin with getting this overgrown mess into a blank canvas?

I've been thinking about hiring a fairly inexpensive dropside truck, to clear a lot of the crap that has piled up - but if I do so I want to make the most of it, if I need to hire anything machinery wise (again, would have to be fairly cheap and nothing too large as there is little access to the garden for anything bulky).

Do I need to use some weedkiller to begin with?

The area where the pebbles were, how do I begin to tackle that? Or should I look at something similar on that part again? (ie, pebbles so there is no need for anything to actually grow).

In terms of what I'm looking for at the end of it (I said I wouldn't get into detail, but a rough idea might be useful so you know what I may need from the soil). I'm not looking for a huge amount of flowers/plans but some would be nice. I think I'd like to dig a small pond, have another small lawn and maybe a bit of decking or some kind of area to have some seats. This doesn't all have to happen ASAP though - but given I have a week off next week I'd like to do as much of the clearing part as I can in that time.

Any advice?

 

Morning
You could use weed killer to kill the plants, the ground would still be full of roots you would have to clear. The best tool for that is probably a mattock, failing that a sharp strong spade.

 

Thanks Nigel. I've got some weedkiller and I'm going to use that over the next few days to get me started. Will pop into B&Q and try to get some new tools to give me the best chance of tackling the surface next week.

Fingers crossed I make some progress!

 

One thought. I don't how fit or old you are, but if you are not used to it, start slowly, take sensible and breaks and plenty of drinks. That way you should be able to stand up straight the next morning.
A hot bath works wonders at the end of the day.

 

Rather than hiring a truck I would consider a skip. This way you can throw everything straight into the skip and youre not double handling it (assuming you have the space for a skip). Most municipal tips wont allow commercial vehicles in now so a skip should be comparable cost to truck hire and cost of disposal.

 

or a hungry goat would do the job without resorting to chemical war

 

The trouble is if you plan to weed kill and it’s the normal glyphosate and you are starting to clear next week it’s best to target the areas that you think you will not get to in that week. Pointless spraying then clearing what you have sprayed.

 

You'll no doubt receive an avalanche of contrary advice, Idunsire, but personally, I'd invest in some weed-supressing membrane and cover each area that you clear, as you go along. That gives you breathing space to get right round without an exuberant crop of annual weed seeds germinating as soon as your back is turned! Black plastic or old carpet does the same job but (imho) looks awful! We'll need close-up photos of your plants for ID purposes.

 

One thing from bitter experience. Only clear ground which you can immediately plant stuff in. Even if it's only cheap grass seed just to cover it, make sure you put something there. Otherwise there are plenty of wind-blown weeds which specialise in colonizing fallow ground, and in a month's time you'll be back to square one.

That said, your approach is right. The only way to shift weeds is to get the roots. Sometimes that's just digging and removing, and sometimes (I had a battle with bindweed in a previous house) you have to poison them. As much as it's nice to avoid nasty chemicals, for some weeds there just isn't an alternative.