I've taken some photos of the yard around my new house. Well, more than some. I have 28 shots! Uploaded to Yahoo Photos. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mermaidud ... GB_VMoi1yT Clearly at one time someone who loved gardening lived in this house and spent hours in the garden. The people we bought from had the house as an investment property and rented out the top and basement of house. Tenants have done nothing with the garden. Landlords hired someone to mow the lawn. Most of the garden has perennials. Most of them have grown too tall or spread out. Lots of weeds. Check out the jungle. This is behind a brown picket fence. I recognize morning glory, blackberries, and rhubarb. The rhubarb will be transplanted to a wooden box at the base of a tree. The rest of that jungle will be attacked by our bush machine and then a rototiller. The broken down lean to was created from road signs and we'll dismantle that and take it to the dump. We plan to return it all to grass. Any suggestions? Keep in mind that I don't know the names of most of what is growing on this property and that I am not a gardener. I'm just as likely to pull out a plant thinking it is a weed. We don't want to get too carried away with the backyard. It may be subdividable. If it is we will sell the lot. Unknown until we check with the city. But we want to tidy it up. Make it look like the owners are taking pride in their property and that we aren't renters. We plan to power wash the picket fence that runs the perimeter of the property and repaint it blue if the property can't be subdivided. Sorry to say if we can sell the lot that beautiful tree will be torn down by the new owners as it will be too close to the house, if not inside it depending on the house plans.
Beautiful property you've got there Whistler! It looks like it was a garden paradise at one time. I would begin by looking at any obvious garden areas and start pulling any grass and things you KNOW are weeds (dandilions, clover, ragweed etc) Watch the other plants over the course of the summer until you can identify them. There's probably lots of good stuff in there!
Oh dear you call that a jungle - I'd better not show you photographs of my garden then!!! I would tackle one area at a time and, as Netty says, pull out everything you know are definately weeds. If you take close up pictures of the plants you're not sure about then we'll try to help you ID them. It certainly looks as though you have some great shrubs there.
I would love to have that kind of jungle to work with. Lots of good plants in there. You say you are planning to return it all to grass, does that include all the flower bed areas or just the area where that shed is? If you have no interest in keeping the flower beds, I would recommend that you contact a local garden club and ask if their members would be interested in digging up all the saveable perennials and vegies for their own use. Some garden clubs even plant and maintain gardens as a community service project and could use free plants. After they have removed anything that is a good plant then you can till under the rest.
We're leaving the garden areas where flowers and weeds are growing alone and will try to get them under control. The area we're returning to grass is the jungle behind the picket fence where the dilapidated lean to is. I believe it may have been a vegetable garden at one time. That area can't be seen from the street but I want to clean it up. Rototilling and putting down sod seem to be the easiest solution. There are no known vegetables growing on the property. Fruits that we can identify are 2 apple trees in bad need of pruning, some rhubarb that we're moving to a different location, and some blackberry bushes that won't be saved. I can see about some local garden clubs. I know they're out there. What I'm hoping to find is someone who lives in a nearby condo who has a green thumb and wants to enjoy some gardening and take home the fruits of his/her labor.
It is a beautiful yard! When we bought this house it had pretty much the same story...once owned by someone who loved to garden, then sold to someone who rented it out and it became overgrown. It could be fun trying to identify what you've got. I've had to do a lot of that because the previous owner planted things that aren't typical in this part of Florida (i.e. a pear tree). I can definitely see either morning glories or moonflowers on the picket fence...probably both...an in that fenced in area "the jungle" I see an incredible perennial border...delphiniums, hollyhocks, mixed in with queen Anne's lace....the wildness is pretty attractive in a kind of Secret Garden sort of way.
