"Lupin" wrote

Hi all, firstly, Im new to this forum and its the onlly and first forum
I have signed up to.. I am also new to gardens, as I used to always live
in flats, but got my first house, with a massive corner garden...
honestly its like a football pitch.

Ive lived here for a cauple of years now and Ive slowly been waiting on
fencing being pulled down and new fencing being put up etc.
Finally my garden is now free from these section fences, which used to
split it into 3 parts.... one area was used to grow veg and more
recently, light bonfires... the second was used to cultivate brambles
for jam.. the bramble bush had got soo out of hand you could have easily
stored a car underneath it and I did actually find various car parts
beneath them... and lastly the third part was the main area where the
last owner used to just hang the washing out....
This garden has not been touched in 30 + years (apart from when it was
used to grow veg in it... there is still a rhubarb patch struggling to
survive from od knows when, its over 5 years old atleast ) , it is all
grass/weeds/nettles/brambles/weeds etc the ground is solid and extremely
uneven with dips and lumps all over it....

There are several small trees 9 i have no idea what kind they are, but
the smallest is very old and thorny and about 15 foot i think... while
the biggest is made up of serveral smooth barked plain trunks and stands
a good 20ft maybe) along the back fence, which were heavily covered in
the "out of control" brambles, i have however since cut most of the
brambles out of the trees, and only one is left with dead bramble
remains to high for me to reach.

Now you have a rough back ground of the garden Im faced with, onto my
problem......

I really want a garden i can enjoy and Im really eager to get out there
and make something of it, but due to its sheer size I cant afford to do
anything grande enough that will look good in a big garden and it just
overwhelms me basically, I have no idea where to start or what i could
do with this garden.

Its a blank canvas, so I can do pretty much anything with it and plan it
out from scratch, but I honestly dont know what to do with it and where
to start, plus lack of funds makes the options even smaller.

So could you all please give me some brain storms of what you would do
if you had a big garden and could start from scratch on a budget.
whether its little things I could do in the corners, along the fencing,
or dedicate an area to a theme... ahh I really dont know

All advice, opinions, suggestions, anything, its all welcomed and maybe
it will give me some great ideas I hadnt thought about

Welcome to this Newsgroup.
The first thing you need to do is write a list of what you want in your
garden, sunny patio, bbq area, pond, pergola, fruit, veg, flowers, washing
line ....... etc and if you live with others then they also have to write a
list, but seperateley. You then need to combine all lists into a definitive
need/want list.
Whilst some things may not be possible right away (a swimming pool perhaps)
you need to consider them in your plans and provide space for them in
future.
You can then start to design your garden and it becomes easier as some
things will probably only have one place they fit, a sunny patio that get
evening sun for when you finish work for example. Once you decide where all
the hard landscaping will go then plants are next, but plants can be moved,
hard landscaping can't.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK