I took on a garden with nothing in it and I have slowly started to love it but it does take a great deal of time.
First of all, I wouldn't paint your fence, unless it has already been painted. Painting fences takes far too long to do and I have found they need doing every year. Instead, I would make some trellis from old roof battens, paint them and mount them on the fence and then put climbers up them.
I would also say that you should go for something that has a lot of evergreen in it. It adds structure all year round and wont take up much time. Add planters and pots and containers with designated areas that you can update for that instant pop of colour with annuals or something.
I would be tempted to pull up the paving around the edges so you have a border all round the edges and dig it over until its smooth, then cover it with a black membrane and put bark over the top. People will disagree with me but I have a small patio and I have done the same and I can still spend a good amount of time weeding, so any exposed soil adds a lot of extra weeding work. If we didnt do this, we would never have carried on with the garden. You can then plant the border up and then dig a hole and put plants in with compost, dealing with your heavy soil.
I would also suggest getting a big statement bench table set to take up a lot of space in the center of the paving, if you want the paving to be a statement, pull a few up and set bricks in their place or different colour pavers, this will make it look modern. You can build the table and benches easily - look on ebay for ideas and Im sure you could get hold of some scaffolding planks to use. Then put pots in the center of the table that you can update and change.
These are the tips I have found helped me over the past few years to design my table.
Buy some cheap plastic terra-cotta look pots at least 30cm diameter. Buy a couple of bags of potting compost and several packs of easy annual seeds in colours you like. Sow them in the next couple of weeks direct (instructions will be on back of the pack). Place nearest to your house and this will give you pleasure and colour while you decide what to do with the garden. You could also buy a couple of packs of spring/early summer bedding like pansies and violas to plant in your pots - these will last for months if watered in dry periods and dead headed. I would agree with not being in haste to make great changes - just tidy up. Also - this is how I got started - ask family and friends for garden gift tokens for birthdays (or house-warming!) and buy yourself stuff like good pots etc and some basic garden tools as well as long lasting plants. Enjoy - it will become more than a hobby, it will become an oasis!
Supermarkets can be much cheaper than garden centres, the plants can be small, and the likes of clematis will take a couple years to flower, so it depends if you want instant impact. Carboot sales, school fetes and open gardens all sell plants cheaply, as do nurseries as opposed to the garden centres.
Often people will have plant stalls by their front gate if you are going somewhere rural.
Things like perennials, if you buy a large one, it can be slit into several smaller plants, which will bulk up quickly. Relatives will often have plants when they have thinned out a border.
But watch tv shows, and get magazines. Before you know it, you'll be addicted!
I would remove the slabs to the left hand side, keeping the rest as it. That will give a good wide bed. I would add in lots of manure, compost, bark and the like and fork over the area to improve the soil. I would then think about what I want in their. I would say 60% evergreen plants and the rest a mix of spring-winter interest plants.
Bedding plants do make instant impact but she will get loads more colour from a few packets of annuals at a fraction of the price. Bedding is expensive, even to me now as a gardener of many years. But all the ideas here have merit and I hope "Young & Inexperienced) is able to find something that helps. Good luck anyway!
I would take the advice of Runnybeak1, clean everything and a nice lick of paint works wonders. I would wait a while before digging up the slabs, look at other gardens around where you live to see what grows well. When you invite friends round for a barbecue ask them to bring some nice potted plants instead of alcohol !!! I've had some bargains in the plant section of Morrison's/Tesco at a reasonable price too. Ask your family to give you vouchers for local garden centres. You need to check what soil type you have before you plant anything especially as you are a novice. Get some books and look on Google for some ideas as well.
Good luck and keep us posted, you can always come back here for more advice
,Hire a jet washer to thoroughly clean the paving. It's a real bonus! I agree, climbers will do a lot -and honeysuckle will give fragrance without costing too much (read the label -some don't smell ). Jasmine is also wonderful and easy to maintain. Then invest in the largest terracotta coloured pots you can find and pot them up with hardy fuchsias (upright) hardy geraniums and add nasturtium seeds. Bright and can be left out over winter or transferred to the border once plans are more established. Enjoy your garden haven!
Find a good garden centre and visit it regularly throughout the year, what you will find is that at any specific time of year they will be promoting those plants which provide colour and look their best. Therefore rather than doing one visit and buying lots of stuff, visit every month or so and buy smaller amounts. That way you will end up with colour/interest all year round.
The other bonus of doing things slowly is that you can correctly space stuff. An easy pitfall to fall into is to cram too much stuff in too close together. Which when it grows it becomes too crowded. It's easy to do this as we naturally want things not to look too sparse, but sparse is good when starting out.
Posts
I have been in the same position as you.
I took on a garden with nothing in it and I have slowly started to love it but it does take a great deal of time.
First of all, I wouldn't paint your fence, unless it has already been painted. Painting fences takes far too long to do and I have found they need doing every year. Instead, I would make some trellis from old roof battens, paint them and mount them on the fence and then put climbers up them.
I would also say that you should go for something that has a lot of evergreen in it. It adds structure all year round and wont take up much time. Add planters and pots and containers with designated areas that you can update for that instant pop of colour with annuals or something.
I would be tempted to pull up the paving around the edges so you have a border all round the edges and dig it over until its smooth, then cover it with a black membrane and put bark over the top. People will disagree with me but I have a small patio and I have done the same and I can still spend a good amount of time weeding, so any exposed soil adds a lot of extra weeding work. If we didnt do this, we would never have carried on with the garden. You can then plant the border up and then dig a hole and put plants in with compost, dealing with your heavy soil.
I would also suggest getting a big statement bench table set to take up a lot of space in the center of the paving, if you want the paving to be a statement, pull a few up and set bricks in their place or different colour pavers, this will make it look modern. You can build the table and benches easily - look on ebay for ideas and Im sure you could get hold of some scaffolding planks to use. Then put pots in the center of the table that you can update and change.
These are the tips I have found helped me over the past few years to design my table.
Buy some cheap plastic terra-cotta look pots at least 30cm diameter. Buy a couple of bags of potting compost and several packs of easy annual seeds in colours you like. Sow them in the next couple of weeks direct (instructions will be on back of the pack). Place nearest to your house and this will give you pleasure and colour while you decide what to do with the garden. You could also buy a couple of packs of spring/early summer bedding like pansies and violas to plant in your pots - these will last for months if watered in dry periods and dead headed. I would agree with not being in haste to make great changes - just tidy up. Also - this is how I got started - ask family and friends for garden gift tokens for birthdays (or house-warming!) and buy yourself stuff like good pots etc and some basic garden tools as well as long lasting plants. Enjoy - it will become more than a hobby, it will become an oasis!
Supermarkets can be much cheaper than garden centres, the plants can be small, and the likes of clematis will take a couple years to flower, so it depends if you want instant impact. Carboot sales, school fetes and open gardens all sell plants cheaply, as do nurseries as opposed to the garden centres.
Often people will have plant stalls by their front gate if you are going somewhere rural.
Things like perennials, if you buy a large one, it can be slit into several smaller plants, which will bulk up quickly. Relatives will often have plants when they have thinned out a border.
But watch tv shows, and get magazines. Before you know it, you'll be addicted!
I would remove the slabs to the left hand side, keeping the rest as it. That will give a good wide bed. I would add in lots of manure, compost, bark and the like and fork over the area to improve the soil. I would then think about what I want in their. I would say 60% evergreen plants and the rest a mix of spring-winter interest plants.
Bedding plants do make instant impact but she will get loads more colour from a few packets of annuals at a fraction of the price. Bedding is expensive, even to me now as a gardener of many years. But all the ideas here have merit and I hope "Young & Inexperienced) is able to find something that helps. Good luck anyway!
I would take the advice of Runnybeak1, clean everything and a nice lick of paint works wonders. I would wait a while before digging up the slabs, look at other gardens around where you live to see what grows well. When you invite friends round for a barbecue ask them to bring some nice potted plants instead of alcohol !!! I've had some bargains in the plant section of Morrison's/Tesco at a reasonable price too. Ask your family to give you vouchers for local garden centres. You need to check what soil type you have before you plant anything especially as you are a novice. Get some books and look on Google for some ideas as well.
Good luck and keep us posted, you can always come back here for more advice
,Hire a jet washer to thoroughly clean the paving. It's a real bonus! I agree, climbers will do a lot -and honeysuckle will give fragrance without costing too much (read the label -some don't smell ). Jasmine is also wonderful and easy to maintain. Then invest in the largest terracotta coloured pots you can find and pot them up with hardy fuchsias (upright) hardy geraniums and add nasturtium seeds. Bright and can be left out over winter or transferred to the border once plans are more established. Enjoy your garden haven!
Find a good garden centre and visit it regularly throughout the year, what you will find is that at any specific time of year they will be promoting those plants which provide colour and look their best. Therefore rather than doing one visit and buying lots of stuff, visit every month or so and buy smaller amounts. That way you will end up with colour/interest all year round.
The other bonus of doing things slowly is that you can correctly space stuff. An easy pitfall to fall into is to cram too much stuff in too close together. Which when it grows it becomes too crowded. It's easy to do this as we naturally want things not to look too sparse, but sparse is good when starting out.