What to do with this back garden?

ronnie3585

As you can see in the photos we’ve just cleared a year’s worth of weeds and overgrowth from our back garden. I’m trying to figure out what to do in order to stop the weeds coming back. I’m a complete newbie when it comes to gardening so I don’t really know where to start. Fundamentally, we want to spend as little money as possible, this isn’t our “forever house” so we just want to manage it until we move on.

We are about to put a shed where the end of the stone chips are, but before we pour the base we need to figure out what’s best to do. It will be the area of soil pictured that we will be working on, it measures approx. 16m x 4m, the soil is of very poor quality and full of rocks.

I haven’t even priced it but I assume a permanent solution like paving or decking would be too expensive. We don’t really want a lawn but if it was cost effective to buy a load of top soil and seed we’d do it. I would be very grateful to hear any other suggestions that you guys may have?

Cheers.

sullivk

We moved into a new build last year, garden was just a patch of grass and we had a pretty low budget to work with.

We kept a small area of lawn, built raised beds around the perimeter from old scaffolding planks.
Paving was working out too expensive but we needed some hard landscaping for tables/chairs kids to go on their toys etc.
We ended up putting a Ballylusk self-binding grit down on a base of hardcore. Worked out much cheaper than paving as we did it ourselves, excavating 6 tonnes of soil was the hardest bit but if you're trying to save money??...
I don't know how to attach pictures to show you I'm afraid but we're very happy with it ðŸ˜႒

Harry Palmr

ronnie3585 wrote: »

As you can see in the photos we’ve just cleared a year’s worth of weeds and overgrowth from our back garden. I’m trying to figure out what to do in order to stop the weeds coming back. I’m a complete newbie when it comes to gardening so I don’t really know where to start. Fundamentally, we want to spend as little money as possible, this isn’t our “forever house” so we just want to manage it until we move on.

We are about to put a shed where the end of the stone chips are, but before we pour the base we need to figure out what’s best to do. It will be the area of soil pictured that we will be working on, it measures approx. 16m x 4m, the soil is of very poor quality and full of rocks.

I haven’t even priced it but I assume a permanent solution like paving or decking would be too expensive. We don’t really want a lawn but if it was cost effective to buy a load of top soil and seed we’d do it. I would be very grateful to hear any other suggestions that you guys may have?

Cheers.

Did you just decapitate the weeds, random plants and briers? The best solution is to dig it all out - or get chemical on it (not that I approve of that sort of thing!). I know nothing about building sheds. Is the intention to put down a permanent base of concrete or just to level it, cover it with a membrane and say gravel on top and then plonk the shed down on batons (is it wood, steel or what?)

dwasol

sullivk wrote: »

We moved into a new build last year, garden was just a patch of grass and we had a pretty low budget to work with.

We kept a small area of lawn, built raised beds around the perimeter from old scaffolding planks.
Paving was working out too expensive but we needed some hard landscaping for tables/chairs kids to go on their toys etc.
We ended up putting a Ballylusk self-binding grit down on a base of hardcore. Worked out much cheaper than paving as we did it ourselves, excavating 6 tonnes of soil was the hardest bit but if you're trying to save money??...
I don't know how to attach pictures to show you I'm afraid but we're very happy with it ðŸ˜႒

Can I ask how this can be done ?
We’ve a back garden we don’t want.
Would prefer solid ground for kids toys swings trampoline etc but concreting is coming in at over 3000€.
Your alternative sounds much better but is it suitable ?
Thank you

_Brian

Strim it off. Gather the grass and dispose of it.

Mow it regularly and most weeds will die from regular mowing.

Apply a feed and selective weed killer and that will sort the rest.

Queasy Tadpole

You've a grand space there. I'd remove all grass. Pave it or decking or whatever. As I've grown older the upkeep on grass is not worth it. We had a similar back garden had it all filled in. It's used daily now with hardly any maintenance.

Seve OB

Grass is not hard to maintain to a basic level. You could easily get away with mowing every 2 weeks in growing season, possibly even 3 weeks.
Just do a little research on what seed to put down and stay away from roll out stuff, tends in my experience to be cheap hard wearing grass prone to weeds. And it is so much easier to just scatter some seed.

Idbatterim

You could put down mypex membrane and chippings, by far the easiest and cheapest solution....

FrancieBrady

Idbatterim wrote: »

You could put down mypex membrane and chippings, by far the easiest and cheapest solution....

If you have any scutch grass roots in there you will have a world of pain. It literally darned the mypex to the ground here. Drove the hard white root up through the barrier and ran a lattice work of runners underneath it...with the weed popping up every where. It was unbelievable pulling it up. And we had dug over the ground and thought we got it all out.