Hello everybody!

Morning all,

New member here and completely novice (rubbish) gardener just posting to say hello! Find that I tend to ruin / destroy / take the infinitely long way round in even the simplest of gardening tasks, so thought I’d join up, touch base, engage and hopefully get some knowledge about gardening in the process.

I hope that everyone is keeping safe and well on this beautiful Monday morning.

 

Hi Sophocles,

Welcome, hope you too are well and if you need help in this area of weed cultivation then I can assist there.
If it is the green fingers then there are many social types who have them on here.
We all had to start somewhere and the beginning is the best place to start.
Let us know where roughly you are and what soil you have, not just brown with worms in it but whether it has thick clods of mud or sandy soil or even in between.
Then what aspect you are facing, This being which way does your garden or patch of land in relation to the sun sit. East west or north south.
Weeds and other plant life in that location helps to see with photos so a better assistance can be given.
Then in time those who are willing to assist in this area will offer their knowledge and expertise to you.
Again welcome and enjoy the quips and anecdotes from them to all.

 

Hiya @Sophocles welcome to the forum

 

Hello @Sophocles and welcome to the forums

 

Hi Sophocles,

Warm welcome to Gardeners Corner. So you think you are 'rubbish'. Hope you have a sense of humour. This is the 21st century. We now recycle almost everything, so.

Ask your questions and in no time at all. We will have cecycled you and you will be known at Atitchmarsh or Capability Brown ll

 

Welcome to GC, your comment about rubbish at gardening, Is one I here regularly with newbie gardeners, and its usually they dont know a couple of very basic things, or over complicated things in their mind, especially when latin names are mentioned.
Right plant in the right place, then maintainance, thats all it comes down too, you can learn the rest later.

 

First steps. (Very basic)..
Draw a map of your garden, it does not have to be to scale, but in the basics, shed, path etc, then mark the areas, wherebthe sun is all day, these are your full sun areas, then where the sun does not get, these are your shade areas, everywhere else for starters are your partial shade areas.

Then we have to find what type of soil you have, is it clay, when you dig it, is it heavy, moist, and clumps together, or does it crumble and dry, it does not matter which at the moment, because we can change it (improve it) a bit later, then we need find out what the PH levels are, in each of the full sun, shade and partial shade areas, to do this, from the garden centre/wilko/b&q, younpurchase a soil testing kit, they are about £5 for a cheap one, follow the instructions on the packet, and find out if areas are Acidic, neutural or alkaline, test all the areas, because the levels can change in the smallest of gardens.
Once you have done this, you will have the basics of your garden areas and soil type. Then pick any colour scheme you wish, for example we choose, purple, pink, red, white. You can now ask your local nursery/garden centre/forum... I have a full sun area, my soil is acidic, my colour scheme is... what do you have? If the reply is I dunno, or anything other than we have these these, and these, go somewhere else, thats all you need to do for now, apart from understanding some basic maintainance of plants, the names, styles of garden you can learn later.

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner Sophocles.

 

Wow! What a fantastic community! Thank you for the warm welcome everyone

I had imposter syndrome when I made the first post and figured it may get ignored. Lots of people advising to post specifics about my garden, which has made me think about the journey so far and lead to this rather epic post with pictures! So I'll post a little about my gardening journey to date for those who are interested and for those who want a laugh! Be warned, it's long! But when I started it I had such a laugh thinking of the things I've done that it felt quite cathartic to put it together and was quite enjoyable. Please accept my apologies and feel free to ignore.

...

Moved in to the house 6 years ago, having never been in a house with a garden previously, so figuring things out as I go along. It's been a wonderful learning experience and I'm ready to do things better / properly when we move in a few years.

It's a small garden, south-east facing which is surrounded by 6ft walls and then 10 foot hedges on all sides (well 3, and the house on the 4th), which creates uneven levels of light throughout. Think Mediterranean-courtyard-esque. Did not have the knowledge to think about the practicalities of this when we bought, and we viewed in the summer where it seemed perfectly improvable. The Neighbours on the 3 sides all have higher gardens,

The garden was a mess when we moved in and was gravelled. Wanted a lawn area, having lived in houses with concrete gardens forever, so after sorting the interior in the first two years, went out back and cleared several tonnes of gravel, cut back hedges etc and started digging to find, what I now know is, heavy clay soil.



Dug down around 16". A spade did nothing so used a mattock which helped, replaced with good topsoil and seeded and within a month had a lovely lawn.



Then built a few borders and plants and was hoping to build climbers on some of the walls. Life was good. For a few months anyway...



And then the winter, rain and snow came and I found out just how wrong I'd gotten it. I'd effectively made a swamp in the shaded half.





Spent the next year and a half trying various fixes, with none of them working. Some of the highlights included:

1. Areating with a core aerator and filling with perlite/sharp sand.
2. Aerating with a bulb planter and filling with the above.
3. Using a post-hole borer and digging 3.5 ft holes and then filling with gravel. I had a change of heart after spending the day digging the holes after worrying that I'd create a series of sumps. So filled the holes back and completely wasted that day.
3. Dug down hoping to break a 'clay pan' which I'd read about online. It didn't. I spoke to some neighbours who said that the clay from here was shipped to London and helped to build St. Pancras station. That little bit of water didn't move in 4 days.


2. I found a guy on Gumtree selling well-rotted horse manure for next to nothing. Having no idea of quantities, I asked for a delivery. He dumped a tipper-truck worth on my driveway. A tipper-truck worth of horsesh!t for a tiny garden. It rained that weekend as I spaded it all on to the top of the lawn in my shorts and wellies. Someone mentioned a rotovator would be a good idea, so I hired one from a local building company, thinking it would be a small machine. This thing was a huge. And really heavy. And because it rained, it literally just sank into the muddy, horsemuck mess I'd made and splattered everything all over the walls. I ended up forking that in by hand over the weekend.
3. Built raised borders with treated wood, filled, levelled, and turfed. But it still flooded and the grass died. I never got to plant in those borders.

Decided last year that instead of going up on the borders, I should go down. Dug a couple of inches around the lawn by about a foot, used some old fence posts I had in the garage and covered with some gravel to make a gravel border. Was about to turf when the horrendous storms of last year came and …



So before turfing, I decided to try and put some aco drains to take the surface water runoff from the patio slabs and into the sewer. Considered a soakaway but after digging last year felt that a) it wouldn't drain and b) it wasn't possible to put it 5 meters away from the house boundary wall without putting it literally under the garden retaining walls and worried about potential issues it could create with foundations. Had no idea what I was doing but figured it out pretty easily.



Returfed using a budget turf from a local supplier. And then the really heavy rains of last year came and put it to tthe test. And it survived!



This final picture was taken at the start of the year. It's a little different now and considerably messier.

This week, I considered planting in some of the borders. So I dug a test hole. The clay was unsurprisingly very clayey, but moved easily with a spade. Lots of worms in there so I'm assuming that horse much did something good.

It took 4 hours for 4 litres of water to drain, which was significantly better than the previous attempt.

I have two questions that someone may be able to help with:
1. Am I likely to ever be able to plant here if I dig 30" or so down and add plenty of compost? Or should I just give up and use pots / raised planters? A little tired of the prison-esque lifeless walls of the place now and dying to add something that will grow, mature and add a little colour.
Also, the far wall gets very little light. Coupled with the poor soil conditions, is there anything that I could grow there?

I'm really aiming to get to a place where we can enjoy the garden a little more, rather than it being a perpetual building site. I have however, rather enjoyed every part of it so far. Most of it anyway.

Apologies for the rant! If anyone could advise on the border question, that would be a wonderful aside. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about for clarity.



Cheers!

 

This was very helpful. Much appreciated. I wish I'd have done this when I first ventured out into the world of gardening. I'll add this to my to-do list for the week now and post it once completed.

 

I like the idea of studying Sophocles as part of the school curriculum!!

 

What a nightmare and you've tried everything possible. You need an award for perseverance. The only idea I have is to dig down those 30 inches or so along the borders and fill the bottom with up to 6 inches of gravel and then fill with a mixture of compost and soil. There's no point in filling the border completely with compost as it rots down unlike soil. When it's back filled I'd then put raised beds on top, at least a foot higher than ground level and fill that with the same compost and soil mix. It may be best to buy in topsoil to help avoid the clay. This should hopefully give you enough depth to put plants in, omitting trees.

There are quite a number of plants that will tolerate shade, including certain climbers, so all is not lost. Perhaps our friends here can help you out by suggesting some, or maybe an internet search.