Steve wrote
I'm new on the forum, so apologies if I'm going over old ground here.

In the next couple of weeks, I'm moving into a new house, and the
garden hasn't been touched for a year. Frankly I don't know where to
start.

I know a little about gardening, but I'm out of practise. I could
really do with some practical advise about how I can bring the garden
back into shape, along with a rough time scale of when the actions
should be done.

Some details of what I'm getting myself into:

Front garden:
Garden is not especially large. Lawn in the middle, needs a mow. medium
sized trees and large shrubs ( none yet identified ) which are badly out
of shape. climbing roses are in some of the tree's, very straggly and
twiggy.

Soil is very poor. No light seems to get to the bottom of soil itself.



Back garden:
Windswept. Small piece of grass needs a mow and a scarify. borders full
of tatty and stragly small perenials, all over grown. A few climbing
roses that have grown up the garage wall and now right over the top of
the garage and spreading along the roof. Small plastic pond that is 90%
full of mud and plants - no fish. Needs completely re-starting from
scratch. Hedges ( various species ) don't seem to have been cut for two
years. Hugely overgrown. Soil seems much better quality.


I have two main desires:
1) Get the garden into reasonably tidy shape, so it's not annoying me
over winter

2) carry out any preperation/planting that's needed so that I can start
a spring "campaign" to make it start looking good.

The problem I have is that it's already october, and I might not be in
the house until the end of october. I want to make it tidy and neat for
the winter, but I *think* it's getting too late in the year, and I'm
concerned I'll just kill everything.

I wonder if someone would be able to give a novice some advice on what
is practical to do at this time of year without getting into a mess
next year.

If some one could also provide some advice on the sorts of
plants/bulbs/seeds etc that I should be thinking of getting in at this
time of year, so as to get at least some colour in the spring, I'd be
eternally greatful.


The normal advise is to not do anything much for a year to see what you have
got. There might just be some gems amongst the overgrown stuff. Did you see
it during the summer?
Herbaceous perennials are normally tidied up (cut back to almost the ground)
in the autumn so you will be able to do that which will make a significant
improvement to the tidiness of the garden for now and next year. The shrubs
you can attack too. I've even attacked an overgrown shrub with a chainsaw
reducing it from 10ft tall to 1ft stump and it's now a superb small bush.
Even camellias can be hard pruned. Certainly the roses can be hard pruned to
a foot tall to start them again if you want to keep them.

Once you have tidied up you may be surprised how much better it all looks
and you can then remove what you know you don't want. As I said before,
don't assume it's all rubbish.
After that fork over the soil and get some well rotted manure and spread
that on top of the soil and the worms will take it down over winter.
Then come the spring you will see what's what and can think of new plants
etc. That said you simply do not know what bulbs etc are dormant under the
soil already.

Of course if you want an unrealistic TV style makeover nuke the lot and
throw money at it. :-)

If you are anywhere near me let me know, I'm sure your garden isn't like a
friends/neighbours when they moved in. I did over 35 trips to the dump in my
90 (Defender) van for them!

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
17mls W. of London.UK