Overwhelmed by my garden

Hi,

I'm a complete gardening novice and I have quite a large garden which feels overwhelming. In particular there are two areas I'm struggling to do anything with:

( 1) an overgrown patch near the house.





(2) an area where last year I made a disasterous attempt to grow vegetables.



I'd really appreciate any suggestions as to how I can make these areas look better. I don't really want to try and grow vegetables again in area (2). I have very little money to spend.

Thank you.

 

It's always a good idea to provide a bit of info to obtain the best advice..........roughly where in the UK are you and which aspect is the garden mainly facing - N S E or West.
Difficult to tell from your photos the plants you have in the 1st pic but I'd suggest you clear, remove or trim back the messy stuff first. You could maybe then get some annuals in there until you decide on your permanent planting.
If you want to keep your lawn, then at some point you could re seed the bare bits or put in some daisies, clover and such like. Plenty of Lawn experts on the forum who can explain the best way to go about that. Good luck with it

 

Hi @Pe7e.

My initial thought on area 1 is to cut and strip back if you are finding it a bit overgrown and see what’s left as plants start growing. Brambles are quite thuggish unfortunately so you will need to really try to get the roots and not just cut off. Ideally a full clearing of that area would leave you with a blank canvas then. Depending on the soil and sun etc you can choose new plants and an economical way is to sow or plant annuals and small geraniums etc that will spread.

Area 2 you could either improve the lawn as @Philippa mentioned, or completely dig over then plant or sow seeds. A wildflower mix could work or plenty of summer bulbs will be cheaper than bought plants.

I’m sure others will make some good suggestions.

 

Just a general tidy up would make it look a lot better, dig out anything like brambles now before they start growing.
There is nothing big there that needs sorting just spend a few hours dumping what you dont need anymore and dont take your eye off the ball.
A bit of work now and then is better than one big fix and then sit back.

 

Get rid of all the rubbish and plastic and follow the suggestions above so you have a clean slate to work with. Then with some graph paper plan out your garden.
If you enter your location you will receive better advice as you could be anywhere between the Orkneys and the Channel Islands or the East coast and West coast.