Hi Everyone,
This is my first time on this forum so am abit unsure what i am doing so please bear with me!
I have an outdoor area that needs some work done but we are unsure what to do. I have attached a picture so you can see what I am talking about.
We pretty much have no money so we need a really cheap fix for this area!
We are planning on taking out the garden bed along the fence line & putting grass in this area. We are keeping the other garden bed in place.
We need ideas for the area with the bark chips (now covered in leaves from the tree! which we would like to keep). Originally there where stones there but we took them out as our dog was flicking them everywhere & they where hitting our car all the time. We put the bark chip down but that has proved a disaster as it goes everywhere & it also goes through the bottom of our shoes!
We are thinking of removing it & just leaving dirt there. This wont look very nice though so any ideas would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance
Hi, I'm wondering why you want to get rid of the garden on the fence line? IMO there's not much that appeals about a bare fence line.
If you keep the existing tree you have to rake leaves or let them mulch down. And I gather you'd rather get rid of the wood chip, so...
Extend the brick paving from the verandah steps to the brick path. It appears that the path goes around the other side of the house, if so, you could pull them up from there and re-use, and grow your lawn over the bare strip.
Make more of a feature of the path by extending the stones along both sides of the path. Having a little edged bed near the house and then the other side on fence line looks bitsy. By edging both sides of the path the lines will flow, neaten and harmonising the appearance of all garden beds.
Does your tree suck all the moisture from the ground where it's planted? If so, build up a mound of good rich composted soil around the tree. Plant some small shrubs in the mound that like good drainage. The leaves of the tree will mulch into the garden bed- except for the wind blown ones of course! So this will keep sweeping the path to a minimum, some sweeping or raking is inevitable with that tree.
Agree with the above - don't get rid of the bed next to fence! If anything just plant a few more bushy/luscious plants in there to bulk up the space so it doesn't look so desolate.
Extending hte path and running a border on the near-side of the path will help in appearance and also in retaining the mulch. Once you do that I think you'll be fine.