Need some help please.

hi, I'm new here and new to gardening.
I brought my house in March last year from an elderly lady who kept the garden in very condition and it looked great throughout the summer months.

Anyway as winter approach I decided that I would remove everything that was dead and start fresh this year, so I did a lot of digging thinking this is the right thing to do.

So my plans for this year was to plant loads of flowers and make the garden look really nice, but as Spring has arrived I've noticed a lot of flowers already growing.

Frankly I don't know what to do, i want to remove everything so I can grow what I want to grow, and to be honest I'm not even sure how to maintain my garden in reagards to growing flowers.

In a nutshell I'm lost... Any help, tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

Hi. My advice would be, don't blitz it and don't start from scratch. It isa monumental undertaking, with a big learning curve, lots of work, lots of expense, and lots of disappointment.

The garden is probably the result of decades of effort. Decades of finding out what thrives in the veryspecific conditions and what doesn't.

If you want to start from scratch, I'd recommend doing it in stages. Blitz a small section, work on that, learn from it, while the rest of the garden at least partially looks after itself. You might like some of the plants. You could always move them, potentially saving yourself an absolute fortune.

If you're really, really determined to blitz it, then I'd dig out and pot up as many plants as possible. Keep some, sell some, give some away, whatever but please don't just bin them. Then spray the emptied garden with round-up. Give it time to work, dig the lot over, then embark on years of work establishing your new garden.

 

Sound advice above, I'd wait a lil longer and see what grows.. if you like it, its a bonus! Don't just dump them though like clueless said give them away or car boot them. If you are really set on growing certain things this year grow them in pots

 

Hi Ashwheeler,

I agree with Clueless and Loofah, you'd be amazed at what the difference is between a garden in Winter and a garden in Spring/Summer.

I remember when we first moved into a house with a garden for the first time and we didn't have a clue about gardening ( I was about 14 then ). We dug over a patch about 20' sq and kept throwing weird looking things away. It was only when we got to know the old man ( a lovely man called Jim who became a very good friend of ours ) who lived next door that we discovered we'd destroyed a beautiful Lily garden and thrown away about 200 established clumps of Lily bulbs.

Please wait and perhaps talk to your neighbours, don't make the same mistake as we did