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Overgrown neglected garden
kelbrace
Posts: 2
Hi,
I am very new to the gardening world. We have moved into a lovely new home but at the moment the garden is hugely overgrown and neglected.
We have a few little gems in the garden such as various bushes and shrubs which are starting to bloom. Whats the best way to get these back to a more manageable state without ruining them? There is a lot of wild grass(?) and weeds growing in amongst a lot of the bushes so advice on how to manage this would also be great.
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Posts
Having looked at your photos there does not appear to be many weeds - in fact I can't see any!! It looks a lovely garden. Some of the grasses you see may be ornamental grasses. So I would try and identify all the plants you have first - only digging out the most common weeds like dandelion, docks etc. at the moment. You will be quite safe to remove any plants in the paths and paving as almost certainly they will be weeds. Once you have identified your plants you can then find out how to look after them either by reading in books or on line. The easiest way for you is to find a friend, work colleague, relation etc who is keen on gardening and take them round it to help you identify stuff. There is almost certainly someone in your circle that has the knowledge.
looks like you've got plenty of Japanese anemone (three lobed spiky leaves in first pic), lots of ladies mantle (the yellow flowering things in the second pic) and the creeping low level stuff in the 1st pic looks like creeping jenny. it also looks like you have sumac (the multi leaved thing with red stems sticking up on the first pic) and lupin's in the second pic (seed heads visible)
these can all be thinned out if you don't like them, word of warning - the anemone will take forever to dig out.
That's great, thanks both! I'm pretty keen and motivated to tidy it up a little bit. I think the previous owners created a cottage garden type of feel, which is something I'd like to continue. We also have some tiny wild strawberries!