Revenge of the garden part 1

This weekend I decided to try and start sorting out the garden. Firstly on Saturday I mowed the lawn at the front and back of the house. I also mowed the grass outside the front of the house. This was difficult to do as it was about 2 feet long, so I had to go over it 3 times to get it looking right. Next I had to trim the evergreen hedge that goes around the front and back garden. This took all afternoon to do, but it looked good when I had finished.

Then today I started on the back. I have been in a fierce battle with the weeds for years in this garden and I'm affraid to say that the weeds have been winning. A couple of years ago, Me and my Dad managed to get the garden into a managable state, this included re-turfing the back, digging out flower beds and making a 2nd patio. When we had finished it looked very good. But trying to keep ontop of all the weeds is a challenge. Both Me and Amanda have demanding careers, and I commute 4.5 hours a day on the train forwards and backwards to Coventry, so the last thing either of us want to do is sort out the garden.

Herb garden after the membrain put into place.

Well this time I am fighting back against the weeds. It's going to be a lot of work, but when I am done it should mean we have a garden that is much more maintainable yet will look as good as the time Me and my Dad first sorted out the garden. Today I dug out the flower beds and herb area to the right hand side of the garden. What I decided to do was after digging them out, I put down a weed proof membrain. Once this had been secured into place I then covered the areas with gravel. I don't intend to put plants into the ground. I indent to buy nice looking containers to stand ontop of the gravelled areas and put plants into these. This will make the area much easier to maintain.

Work in progress area full of gravel.

I didn't realise just how many bags of gravel we would need. We went to the garden center 3 times today and bought 15 bags of gravel, and this still wasn't enough to fill the flower beds on the side of the garden. This week when I get back from work I will buy more gravel and get the areas properly filled.


Once I have completed these parts I will then sort out the main patio. The guy who owned the house before us did quite a bad job of laying the patio. He didn't put anything down to stop the weeds growing up through the paving slabs, so I will have to lift them all up, level the area off and put a weedproof membrain down. Once I have done this I can re-lay the paving stones and gravel the areas inbetween them. This should stop the weeds growing.

After I have done the patio I will then need to dig out the main flower bed which you can see to the right on the photo above (the overgrown green bit). As before I shall put down the weedproof membrain, but instead of covering the area with gravel, I will put down bark chippings. This should look quite nice when done, and as before we can put containers ontop of the area with flowers etc.

So as you can see there is a lot of work to be done, but the garden should be much more maintainable when I'm finished. Well I hope so anyway. I hope the weeds arn't clever enough to find other ways to invade.