Having your own garden in which you can escape to, enjoy nature and just relax is a beautiful thing.
It’s also something that often requires a lot of work, planning and maintenance to keep it looking healthy, lush and gorgeous, as a stunning well-kept garden doesn’t typically happen all on its own.
Over time, your garden will grow and the various species can start to expand and really take over other areas of the garden you hadn’t originally planned on.
Depending on how much growth there is, it may even start to impede the amount of sunlight that your garden enjoys. Here is a quick guide on what to do if you have an overgrown garden.
What You Will Need
If you’re at the point where you need to clear space in a massively overgrown garden, it can feel like a huge and overwhelming project from the start.
Get your tools ready
You could be dealing with everything from needing to invest in hardcore tools such as an axe to actually chop down overgrown trees and bushes, to tools that will get your garden accessories in tip top shape allowing you to tune them up.
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They have a wide range of forestry accessories as well as the right equipment you will need to stay protected whilst carrying out the work. Engelbert strauss is a name that has become famous on construction sites and workshops across the country, so you know you can count on them for reliability.
Come Up with a Plan
Next, you will want to come up with a plan. Rather than just randomly chopping items down, removing bushes and flowers, and cutting everything back, take a good long look at the garden.
What are the big areas of concern? What areas are the most overgrown? You can even jot things down on paper if it will help you.
You will also want to look at inspirational garden designs to get some ideas of what you want it to look like.
Do Any of Your Plants Look Unhealthy or Diseased?
Another question to ask is whether or not anything looks unhealthy or diseased? Examine all your trees, bushes, shrubs and flowers. The problem is that once a plant is showing signs of disease, it is very hard, if not impossible, to nurse it back to health. In most cases you’re best to get rid of that one.
Stay on Top of the Weeding
Sometimes it’s not so much that your garden has become overgrown, rather it is the weeds that have taken over. That’s why you’ll want to focus on weeding after getting rid of the diseased plants and bushes.
Stay on top of your weeding duties
You can then get a better feel for where things stand once all weeds have been removed. Weeding will be something you’ll need to stay on top of on a regular basis – most likely a couple of times a week, depending on the rate of growth.
Make Sure Walkways are Clear
It’s also important that you cut back anything that may be spilling over or onto walkways. Walkways and paths always need to be kept clear in order to give people that safe area to walk. This may include weeding between the stones, slabs or bricks of a walkway too.
What Are Weeds and Which are Flowers?
As you start the process, you will quickly run into the problem of identifying what is a weed and what are plants/flowers.
Keep your garden pathways clear
Obviously, you want to remove the weeds, but you don’t want to mistake perennials for them. Typically, the best time of year to identify what you want to keep and what you should get rid of is spring, as that’s when everything is just starting up and it’s not too overgrown.
Consider Dividing Up Perennials
Perennials are wonderful items to have in a garden as they come back year after year, getting bigger and fuller each year.
What this means is that you may reach the point where they are too big for their original space, so many home gardeners choose to split their perennials.
You can literally dig out half of the perennial and plant it elsewhere, or even give it to a friend or family member who is in the process of creating their own garden. Just be sure you hold off until the fall to split up perennials.
Give Rejuvenation Pruning a Try
There are also specific species that can handle what is called rejuvenation pruning. This is a very drastic form of pruning where you take off a large amount of the species, completely reshaping and re-sizing it.
This isn’t the type of pruning that all species can handle though, so it’s best to check with your local garden centre first.
Some of those that you can prune down to just 6-10 inches from the ground include St. John’s Wort, Abelia, Lilac, Hydrangea, Dogwood and Honeysuckle bushes. Those that can’t handle such intense pruning should only be cut back by one-third in the early spring.
A Lovely Well-Kept Garden
Using these tips to clear out your garden will allow you to create the well-kept backyard oasis that you had been dreaming of.
And don’t forget to use a good lawn mower and hedge trimmer. You can find out about the latest cordless electric models, such as the GTech 2.0 mower and HT20 hedge trimmer which have both been reviewed on Garden Power Tools.
