Sloping garden

Hello to all, i am a complete novice in the world of gardening and have liitle confidence in my gardening skills, so treat me gently. Me and the missus have just moved into a new house, and the garden is a mess, however i have a good idea and vision of what id like done to it, anyway my first question is the garden slopes, what are my options for levelling the garden out? Also how do i asses whether or not my soil is fertile?.Finally we have a drain which is blocked in our garden from next doors garage i have tried my utmost to unblock, but some water is still visible, any suggestions appreciated and forgive my lack of understanding in the wonderful world of gardening.

Yours The doctor.

 

this is what i mean!!

 

Hi DrDeath, I can't answer your questions directly, but I will try to make a start, so that others on here can appreciate what you are trying to achieve.

Your first question with the slopes, I would say depends on what you have in mind, so please state what that is?

Secondly have you any reason to suspect your soil, is it just clay with not much topsoil for instance?

Finally the drain, don't understand what next doors garage has to do with your land. Presumably that is your garage in the picture (facing the other way). Is the drain in a conceted area and where is it leading to?

Also could do with another picture looking at that hedge/boundary on the RHS (as viewed from the near left of your existing picture.

 

Good questions, DAG - I'd like to add one more - Dr Death, do you have a particular reason for wanting it to be levelled, like wanting to make it easy to cut grass? If I had it, I'd like to keep the slopes, and have alpine planting and terraces, to make a virtue of necessity - it would be a lot less hard work!!

 

Thank you for your prompt replies guys.

Ok first off there is no particular reason id like to level the garden, it just doesnt feel right being at a slope, and would look better being level, sorry if im being wet behind the ears here! My plan is as you can see from the picture, to level the slope, get rid of the overgrown greenery you can see in pic and replace with some plants around the boundaries.

Im sure on second thoughts the soil will be fertile as we have seen plants (weeds lol) in the garden when we moved in.

Regarding the drain, as you can see in the picture, we have a garage behind our house which backs onto our garden, and the drain comes from the roof as in the picture.

p.s forgive the missus and the washing in pic :D

 

Dr D. your drain may only be a soak-a-way,and not connected to a main drain.The water you can see will probably be in the U bend,which is as it should be..
Does it overflow in heavy rain? If so your neighbour should be made aware of the problem and effect repairs ie,dig a deeper soak pit or connect it to the mains.
And they should not have allowed their waste water to drain onto your land anyway.

 

As an adendum to Paladin's reply - another option would be to gain your neighbours approval for diverting the pipe into a rain butt.

Re the levelling out - not sure that that wouldn't cause more problems than its worth. The only two ways of doing it, is to bring the garden down to the level of the lowest - but that would require major excavation, building a retaining wall and then importing top soil, as you would have got rid of whats there. Or raising it to the level of the highest point - which would mean a substantial retaining wall and drainage to protect the house and ? patio area.

I'd go with Den.'s suggestion of terracing - i.e. flat close to the house, then a terraced flat level, then another terraced flat area, perhaps leaving the top area as a bank apropriatly planted. Take a look at the pictures in books in the garden centre - terraced gardens can really have a wow factor.

 

the first thing i noted is two colours of the fence, i think they should all be the same,
secondly i think in the lower area, the soil is below the path, and it should be level, it looks a bit poor, but really difficult to say from a piccy, anyway i suggest you need to build up fertility and get rid of weeds, so perhaps you could go for a "green manure" ie a quick growing crop which will be dug in to the soil.
are you going to build a patio or anything ambitious? ..... and is the lawn to be used for football or for admiring?
the edging stones on left, lower look a bit higgledy piggedy, maybe they need to be straight and level, stepped down in a regular way, to reflect the terracing.
you can t takle the whole garden in one weekend, so id start with that err, grassy area, you have to cutlivate it to improve the drainage in the top 9" and make sure that water is able to penetrate into lower layers, can you fork over the soil below the top 6"?

[ 17. April 2006, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Lady Gardener ]