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Derelict gardens
[...] something like one in five front gardens are never used by their owners, for anything. A quick stroll up the road shows my neighbourhood seems to fit with this.
16 messages
Gardeners' World Web User
24/11/2010 at 16:35
Yea, appreciation, at last!
Gardeners' World Web User
24/11/2010 at 16:36
I will tell Peter and the boys!
Gardeners' World Web User
24/11/2010 at 18:44
I filled my front garden many years ago with shrubs, flowers,dwarf? trees and let it get on with attracting the wildlife and weeds in the few spaces. It teems with birds and insects, especially butterflies but I do line my front path with containers colourfully planted which takes passers-by;s attention away from the free-for-all which is the bulk of the garden. The birds have just discovered the pyracantha berries and there is a great crop of ivy berries for later. The great thing about gardens is that you can have what you like - order or neglect or something in between to suit yourself and usually the end result is pleasure for both people and wildlife. Vive la difference as our French neighbours say.
Gardeners' World Web User
25/11/2010 at 06:44
I' m all for wild / neglected gardens but when you see abandoned prams and assorted scrap metal mixed in then it' s not so good.
Gardeners' World Web User
25/11/2010 at 21:14
Every autumn I usually do the annual tidy up and cutting back to make the garden neat and tidy for the winter. Then I kept reading that wildlife needed the seed heads and dying plants etc in your garden, so this year I did not tidy my garden. It is alive with so many birds of all kinds and insects, beetles and ladybirds are still around, all over the plants and eating the seeds. It is lovely to see the antics of the birds as they try to get to the seeds. I am so happy to see so much wildlife coming in and using it, that I can completely ignore how much of a mess it looks. I will never have a tidy winter garden again.
Gardeners' World Web User
26/11/2010 at 09:14
Reply to kerfred "I will never have a tidy winter garden again". I'll use that line. Rivals even Gone With The Wind. Thank you.
Gardeners' World Web User
26/11/2010 at 10:41
Every garden needs, at least, a rough patch if it is big enough - or even if it is not. A wild area can be just as beautiful - I must admit I abhor the park bedding planting - must be a bit of Jekyll crossed with John Muir? The unburned bonfire now has a dilemma - I cannot set fire to it now for hibernating hedgehogs etc. and by the time they emerge birds will be building nests in it. So the heap will have to be left to slowly rot - at least till September. http://darbishire.blogspot.com/
Gardeners' World Web User
26/11/2010 at 12:00
there is nothing lovelier than an 'abandoned' garden. But to get it right I think you have to carefully select plants for their final size, and if they are evergreen or deciduous. There are abandoned gardens where I live and they are simply leylandii and ivy. Gothic gloom. Nothing grows below. Vita Sackville-West writes on the gardens that were abandoned when their head gardeners had been killed in WWI and that many plants were suddenly discovered to have an elegant shape when left to grow unhindered. Nothing lovelier than a virginia creeper scrambling through a yew for eg.
Gardeners' World Web User
26/11/2010 at 18:54
A few years ago I counted house sparrows in a corner of my village for the BTO. The gardens that had shrubs and a bit of untidiness had the biggest number of sparrows. The manicured gardens had few if any. My garden is large and I try to include wild life friendly plants. I make compost, have a 'dead hedge' that is made up of branches that have been pruned from trees and shrubs and garden organically. I leave some leaves on the flower beds and don't cut down all the spent hardy herbaceous plants and many would say that my garden is far from tidy. I do have a variety of birds and a variety of wild life that live or visit my garden including foxes. badgers and hedgehogs.
Gardeners' World Web User
26/11/2010 at 19:25
there's a happy medium between a rampant mess full of weeds and dog muck and the pristine constipated gardens of South Eastern suburbia!!! just relax attitudes to what constitutes 'gardening', a quick tidy up, leave seedheads and a few corners of wildness will suffice, I have a opile of logs from 2 demolished trees , an unkempt chaotic border system-but all the plants are actually plants or wild flowers, no crisp packets and no animal waste left to fester either,I don 't use insecticides, the ants fasrm the aphids and frogs, hedgehogs and birds sort out any slugs and snails, my jack russell sorts out any large unwelcome rodents in me compost bin, and a sparrow hawk keeps the squirrels away in partnership with me dog-all in all a very good system-but please, no junkyards full of discarded furniture and rubbish, that's just being lazy!!
Gardeners' World Web User
27/11/2010 at 09:21
While my garden is not exactly derelict there are times when it gets a bit OTT and I feel a bit down about it. Then someone looks over the wall and admires my "proper country garden" and it makes me feel better. I used to worry if I hadn't cut everything back at the right time now I leave some things for the wildlife to shelter in or under, My garden is always full of birds with all kinds of tit-masses of long tailed just now-robins,finches,goldcrest,nuthatch etc.I don't even mind the pigeons clearing up the bits under the feeders-keeps them off my veg patch
Gardeners' World Web User
27/11/2010 at 11:35
Birds have stripped both my Pyracantha. Just been out and bought nuts and seeds and also set up some water containers for birds to drink/bathe. Have to be a bit careful where I place them as have 2 cats!!
Gardeners' World Web User
29/11/2010 at 09:49
I don't have much time to tidy up anyway, and my husband can't (and wouldn't) mow the lawn every week - so by the time he does it every 3-4 weeks, it's buzzing with bees, and my ferns, etc. were full of ladybirds this spring. Maybe it's a good job I can't get around to do the "sterile" jobs. The onyl thing I still have to look at is to create more of a wildlife corridor. I have saved 2 frogs a few days ago (habitat destroyed), and it wasn't easy to find a place, where they could hide from the neighbourhood cats, and the cold. Maybe a few more perennials by the fence, on the edge of the grassy area, where I dry the clothes in the summer..
Gardeners' World Web User
30/11/2010 at 21:46
just got into gardening at the begiging of the year and have relly got the bug ive dug new borders and planted loads of stuff through out the year had somm lovely results and im really looking forward to see how all the many bulbs ive planted come on in the new year
Gardeners' World Web User
14/01/2011 at 02:22
my daughter has incorperated vegatables into her front garden and had loads of produce last year, so she made good use of a plot of ground that nobody ever really spent time in, still plenty of shrubs and a little tree and a seat to sit on, and flowers to bring colour.
Gardeners' World Web User
28/11/2011 at 18:41
At times I do wonder why my neighbours bothered to buy a house with a nice sized garden. I look out my back bedroom window and see with 1 or 2 exceptions, Grass from the back fence right up to the back door. Still after all it could be worse I could have some of your so called wild gardens with prames old tyres and bikes to look at.
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