We’ve just moved into a house with a lovely large garden! Hooray! We have hedges, trees, and a fair amount of lawn. Woo and yay.
There’s just one problem: neither of us has any experience of tending a garden. What should we know? What should we be doing, either on a regular basis or on a seasonal basis? How much time do you spend on your garden, and what are you spending that time doing?
Thank you in advance for all your expertise!
Um, where do you live? Local climate will go a LONG way in telling us what you need to know. I live in Texas and know a lot about what is and isn’t drought-tolerant and what can take summer heat, but if you live in, say, Seattle I can’t tell you much beyond the beginner basics.
What’s in the garden already? Annual flowers? Vegetable beds?
What are your goals: lotsa color? Edible yummies? Lowest-maintenance possible?
Ah. Yes, that would have been helpful!
I’m in Oxford, England.
I guess in the short term I’m looking for things I really need to be doing but might not have thought of (do I need to rake up the leaves that are getting scattered all over the garden? How often? And then what should I do with them?).
In the medium to long term I’d absolutely love to plant some nice things to enjoy in the spring and summer, and maybe even some vegetables.
You can safely assume that even the most basic of gardening advice will not appear patronising!
I believe Americans call “the lawn” or “the yard” what English refer to as “garden”, do we not? An American garden being an area specifically prepared to grow flowers or edible crops.
The grass needs to be cut before it sprouts seed heads. This will probably be once a week in the summer, every 2-3 weeks in parts of the spring and fall.
The grass will also benefit from aerating and fertilizing (read up on both) once a year or so. If you get weeds in the grass, one really good springtime application of the right weedkillers will take care of it.
People here also like to “roll” their yard once every year or two, to help keep it flat and even. It’s literally just dragging a big heavy roller across the ground to squash it down.
You’ll be better off raking leaves in the fall than not… if you don’t rake you might get lucky and have them all blow off, or you might get unlucky and have them turn into a slick, sodden mess.
Lots of irritating things like crabgrass and bindweed actually grow under the ground. If they encroach on your flower and vegetable beds, you’ll have to dig them up back to the periphery of the bed. It is best to keep on top of this; it’s easy for them to take over completely, and then you have to rip out the bed and start afresh. Weed barrier a few inches under the ground will minimize this. It’s probably already in place, if your area has problems with such weeds.
Keep your trees and shrubs pruned back; some varieties send up small suckers from the base, and all are wont to grow odd branches in inconvenient directions. You’ll want to be proactive about cutting off dead limbs, too. If you have fruit trees, read up on the best way to prune and spray them to get a nice crop of fruit.
Everything else I can think of verges on house maintenance (keep your gutters clear!) or refers to specific bedding plants (prune your mums monthly till July!), so I’ll hold back until/unless you give us more information…
PS: a house with a garden in Oxford? You lucky sod.
I think it was an Onion article that paraphrased my feelings on veggie gardening perfectly: for only a few hundred hours of work, you can save tens of dollars off your grocery bill every year!
Actually, I enjoyed having an herb garden. Many herbs are very hardy/easy to take care of, and fresh or home-dried herbs really are that much better than what you get in a jar. Other plants I’ve found worthwhile include tomatoes (to-MAH-toes for you in the Commonwealth realms) and hot peppers.
Too late for summer veggies like those, but the long, cold, dark winter ahead will be the perfect time to plan what you want for next year!
Patronizing beginner advice:
Most of the kitchen herbs and veggies you’ll want to grow need lots of sun. Plant accordingly. (If you put tomatoes where they get 2 hours of direct light per day, you’ll be *massively *disappointed. Go for 7-8 hours, if at all possible.) On the other hand, full-shade is a nice place for things like hostas.
Do you want to have a compost pile? If you have a lot of leaves to rake up, that’s a handy place to stash them along with kitchen scraps until they all turn into nice, rich, crumbly free dirt. If you don’t have a huge amount of leaves, I’m a big fan of either leaving them where they fall (they enrich the soil for your lawn) or else piling them onto the perennials (your shrubs ‘n’ things) to act as a winter blanket. But, that depends largely on what kinds of trees you have. Maples, for example, drop lightweight, curly leaves that stay fluffy until they crumble apart in the spring. Sycamores, on the other hand, have huge, heavy, flat leaves that stick together, and that’s when you’ll get the “sodden mess” mentioned above.
See what kinds of things your neighbors are growing - that’ll tell you what looks good, what does well in your area, etc. I have no idea if much can be planted now, though. Around here, we consider pansies a winter annual and they’re just now going into pots and front yards the whole city over, but I believe in your area, they’re more of a springtime thing.
Packets of seeds allow you to experiement for cheap. Sweet peas, zinnias, nasturtium etc. all sprout easily and grow well, even in pots. So do edibles such as radishes, basil and chives. I’ve had excellent results growing Swiss chard and spinach from seed as well. (Look for “Bright Lights” Swiss chard - the stalks grow in neon orange, pink, yellow etc. and it’s just as ornamental as any flower. Plus, tasty.)
If you have a sunny fence you’d like to cover, morning glories also sprout easily from seed. (Wait till the ground is warm.) You could also plant a line of sunflowers in front of the fence. Once they get going, zero care from you is needed.
Also, just a P.S. Sorry, Sattua, but I don’t see the point of “rolling.” Sounds like it would just compact the dirt - drives away earthworms, damages the delicate feeder roots of trees, etc. etc. What good would possibly come of it?
I’m dubious myself… maybe it’s done here because we have lots of frequent freezing and thawing in the winter, which tends to uproot clods of dirt. It’s an aesthetic consideration (though a bad yard is easy to trip in), and yeah, after you roll it you need to aerate it.
PS: every time you mow, you’ll want to weed-whack too, to get the places the mower doesn’t go.
Take it slow and learn as you go. Put a $1 plant in a $10 hole (heard that hear on the Dope, and it’s true) - the dirt you plant in is virtually more important than the plant. Amending your beds with compost, peat moss, etc. before you plant will save you trying to do it after you’ve got established plants.
We’re planting a clover lawn next spring; we’ll let you know how it goes. If it works well, you might want to consider it after you get tired of mowing all the time. 
Best single book on gardening is Barbara Damrosch’s Garden Primer. (She’s a Yank, but plants is plants.)
After 20 years of gardening, this book is still where I start when I need to look something up (which I still need to do sometimes, even after 20 years of gardening).