Creating a garden from scratch... Where to start?!

We moved into an 80s build last year and were faced with this...

Where on earth do we start?!

The easy option would be to get a landscape gardener in and let them take care of the whole thing, but sadly we don't have the budget for that. So, we are undertaking the project ourselves. We are novice gardeners but used to love to potter around our old garden.

The obvious problem are the weeds, which are the main thing we're seeking your advice on. We are planning to extend the patio along the first half of the garden (alongside the house), and would like to have a lawn and borders for flowers on the other half.

What is the best way to kill the weeds off so that they don't come back and best weed killer to use (with the plan to lay a lawn and plant flowers in the future)?

Any advice is greatly received!!

 

Roundup, or anything where the active ingredient is glyphosate will kill the weeds off, but nothing will stop them coming back as glyphosate doesn't do anything to any seeds that have already fallen off. It's still a good place to start if you want to spray it.

Personally, unless there are particularly pernicious weeds in there like bindweed for example, I wouldn't bother spraying it. I'd just take a strimmer to it first, then make sure there are no rocks or lumps of wood etc hidden in there, then mow it.

From there you'll have a clear patch, at least til it starts to grow back. From there you can start thinking about what you want to do with it.

 

I made a passible lawn from an area like that just by constant mowing, a treatment with lawn weedkiller once it began to look passible and then cut beds out to my requirements.