If someone had told me ten years ago just how difficult it would be to eradicate certain weeds from the Letchworth garden maybe I would have examined the gardens of properties a little bit more carefully.

But I just thought the mares tail was pretty among the other flowers… and I truly hate the stuff now… A relative tells me that I could make a beverage with dandelion roots – nope! Sounds like a bad idea. I prefer being told dark chocolate is good for MS (or was it pregnancy?) as the beverage I choose over more healthy choices is hot chocolate but I digress!

We have a lot of saplings needing pulled/dug up, front and back, because of the trees on our street and in opposite gardens. We have beech, rowan, ash and sycamore saplings. Some of which you will say ‘keep’ but my brain thinks our house has shallow footings… too close to the property to grow many trees.

So a surprising choice for a weeding post!

Spiky bushes! Quite a lot of them growing in the front hedge and the front garden is an ‘ouch’ zone. The front garden grass is a propagation zone for the mares tail and although we have a very lightweight mower, it is a right pfaff getting all the bits assembled to cut the small area of grass. In fact I’m seriously tempted to explore alternative surfaces.

Or replacing the grass with proper turves but that involves planning and covering the grass with a tarpaulin to kill what is there… Daisies are culled as there are plenty growing outside the house, despite what people tell me about their benefits to bugs.

And don’t get me started on couch grass. That forms the majority of the back garden ‘grass’ and one benefit of our crazy rescue is that he has been burrowing holes all over the back garden. As well as catching the ratus we don’t try to encourage…

A house a few doors down had their garden professionally landscaped and I have been wondering how much it would cost us to call in the experts. But it would irk me if they got it wrong. Maybe I should apply to one of these Love your Garden makeover shows… or see what help I can get if I advertise locally? #note to self #FB plea?