Garden design ideas needed for cottage garden

[yjones]

Hi all

Ive been doing a house renovation. The inside is fairly finished. Im now turning my attention to the outside. I want a low maintenance garden, but with lots of green and some colour. Im also on a very very limited budget.

As you can see from the photos, the garden is currently a complete tip. Lots of clay and rubble.

My initial thoughts are to have ground cover (minimal maintenance) to the front of the house. I will never use this garden as its by the road. So as long as its green with a bit of colour and very low maintenace then that will do. I also want to gravel the front pathway/either side of the front door.

The side and back (see last photo) I was thinking of having it lawned.

The side of the house (white chimney) is south.

Ive got no experience of gardening or landscaping, so any recommendations and advice is greatly received!

 

[EddieM]

As parts of it are very poor soil, you could remove the rubble and scatter some wild flower meadow seed (not now though) This will take a while to establish until it finds its natural balance, requires pretty much no maintenance, as for other areas you could save money by growing plants from seed. Just some general ideas.

 

[yjones]

I like the idea of the wild flowers.
In the bottom photo you can see the field at the rear with a drainage ditch running down the back. I was think of lawning that bit of ground up to the ditch (or wild flowers as you say) and not having a fence. The drainage ditch would then act almost as a ha-ha.
Would it be a big job to put down top soil and turf the side/back garden? What are possible costs - £500?

 

[scbk]

If you're on a budget don't use turf, seed is much cheaper. You probably don't need any top soil either, just go through it picking out the bits of rubbish and rubble.

 

[endecotp]

very very limited budget.

Find some free plants

Ask on freecycle etc. and befriend your neighbours. It’s common for people to dig up and divide (or even throw away) plants that have outgrown their space. There are lots of things that you can grow from cuttings from other peoples’ mature plants.

Seeds are cheaper than buying plants, but you will need to learn how to propogate them. Buy a cheap plastic windowsill propogator.

Start a compost heap so you’ll have compost to use to improve the poor soil (slowly but surely).

In the part of the garden that’s not a total tip, wait and see what just comes up by itself in the spring before you do anything else.

It looks like you have plenty of work to do just extracting stones before you can do anything else!

Keep an eye on what weeds emerge from the barren patches. If there are nettles, brambles or anything else too pernitious, fix that first.