Tackling An Overgrown Garden

This is a collaborative post.

We all want a garden that is easy on the eye, and ideally manages to be productive at the same time. However, sometimes when we buy a home that could be described as a fixer-upper, or have taken responsibility for handling a place that has been neglected due to illness or absence, beauty and function need to wait. Sometimes, you need to take remedial action before you get to the more fun stuff. When brambles have taken over, weeds have grown to waist height, and any semblance of beauty has been drowned beneath a sea of overgrowth, it can be daunting.

Think of this stage as part of the planning, a tabula rasa moment where you create the canvas for the projects ahead of you, and size up how to get there sooner. The following tips will help you create the garden you need before you can put in place the elements you want.

Take a look at what you’re dealing with

The initial stage of the process is assessment, as you have to know what you are dealing with before you can take action. Clearing obvious clutter and carving out walkways in the mess is important. You’ll have to clear out any old garden furniture, broken pots, and possibly rusted garden tools. Trying to tackle everything at once will only add time to your schedule, so divide the garden into manageable sections, and work your way around gradually - this will also help you learn what you’ll need in terms of equipment.

Deal with weeds in an eco-friendly way

It is important to find ways of dealing with weeds that don’t involve a lot of harsh chemicals. This isn’t out of some earth-parent aversion to being overly tough on the weeds themselves; the more aggressive you get with weedkiller, the worse it is for the soil and the harder it will be to do anything with it that can be ecological, beautiful, or useful. Lop back any overgrown brambles and weeds, and then lay a heavy mulch of bark chippings or compost. A heat gun can be used to burn weed roots close to the earth for the purposes of fighting regrowth.

Accept you may need help

An overgrown garden contains challenges that have been laid by possibly years of nature running wild in good and bad ways. If you’re confident that you can handle that yourself, good luck - but you’re likely to need some expert assistance. If the garden has mature or semi-mature trees, you don’t want to get rid of those, but they need some TLC and professional tree surgeons can really help here. A tree is great at handling excess rainwater, becomes a home for beneficial animal and insect visitors, and can become the centrepiece of a wonderful garden - but it will need some help initially.

Manage the waste

How you manage the waste of a garden clearance depends very heavily on how total the overgrowing has been. You may be best advised to hire a skip if there is a lot of buried furniture or particularly gnarly weeds. If your council has a green bin service, absolutely make use of that, but it may also be a good idea to buy sturdy green waste bags and make trips to the tip to dispose of thick branches, complex roots and similar. On the other hand, some of what you remove from the ground can return to the earth as compost, so consider sectioning off some space for a compost heap. 

Restoring an overgrown garden won’t happen overnight - after all, it didn’t get this way in just a few days. But it can be very rewarding and satisfying, and teach you a few tricks that may come in useful for the future.