Overwhelmed by rear garden

fraser.simpson · October 2023

I moved into a 1930’s semi in 2018. The house has been renovated totally in that time. I’ve tweaked the rear garden, but I don’t really know what to do with it. It’s north facing, so only really sunny at the bottom of the garden. There’s a small slop in the middle of the lawn. Many different levels across the whole thing if I’m honest. The Mrs wants to keep the apple trees. There apparently old.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

fraser.simpson · October 2023

fidgetbones · October 2023

If you have kids playing football in it I wouldn't worry too much. The apple tree probably need a winter prune, followed by summer pruning in later years to form fruiting spurs.

Busy-Lizzie · October 2023

There is a glitch on this site, photos have to be edited and reduced slightly before posting.

Busy-Lizzie · October 2023

It all depends what you want from your garden. It looks as though you have children so it will probably be a play area for a while. If you want plants they may get blasted by a football. If you want vegetables you could get the children involved. Most veg like a sunny spot but some will grow in shade.

Don't be overwhelmed, it's your garden, it can be what you want it to be, depending on the circumstances.

Dovefromabove · October 2023

It looks like a perfectly good and attractive family garden … as your family grows up you’ll have the chance to work on a design that suits your changing lifestyle and aesthetics.., but for now Id concentrate on maintaining what you’ve got and developing your gardening skills. You’ll enjoy it far more if a precious newly installed feature garden isn’t being pelted with footballs etc. 😊

if you want to show us some close ups of the various areas we’ll be able to help out with maintenance tasks so that your garden looks a bit more ‘under control’.

BenCotto · October 2023

An easy way to get a garden looking very much smarter is to make a crisp edge between the lawn and the flower bed. Don’t use those log rolls which decompose very quickly, just a half-moon edger which only costs about a tenner.

Fairygirl · October 2023

I agree - just smartening up the edges to give the planting a better look, and define the lawn, is all you need to do for now. A very nice site you have there

If you wanted, you could improve the little area of the border that's bare -on the left side of the patio. If you can give us an idea of what you like, and the general conditions in it, we can offer suggestions for suitable plants.
While you have kids playing footie etc, the best idea is to wait until they've discovered other things, and then you can alter the area to suit you instead!

JennyJ · October 2023

I agree with the others, there's not much point in putting a lot of time, effort and money into the garden while it's doing footy pitch duty. It looks as if you've got a seating area down at the bottom behind the trees, so maybe concentrate your gardening there, containers if there's no soil around the edges. Lots of veggies will grow in containers, for example tomatoes, cucumbers etc for summer, if that's what you want to grow. If you get hooked on gardening you can do more with the rest when the children are older.

Overwhelmed by rear garden

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