[Closed] I hate gardening

For many years my wife did all the gardening. Now that I have a lot more time to myself, I have begun to enjoy it too. Maybe she should do the gardening, whilst you enertain the children.

Physical labour with no excitement

I don't know about that. I felled and cut this in my garden two weeks ago....

Was quite exciting, in a "might lose a limb" kinda way

I mow lawns. With a noisy Briggs & Stratton powered mower or two.
I like chainsaws.
That is the extent of my gardening other than stringing up a hammock.

Just say no, life is too short to maintain a garden when you could be out on a bike having fun with the rest of the family

That's what i tell my wife and it works, our garen gets a mow 2-3 times a year if i can be arsed, the swimming pool kills half of it anyway during the summer

I'm with you OP.

I've just done such a bad job of 'repairing' the lawn (it now looks like an aerial view of the somme with slicks of grey mud and occasional tufts of dead grass poking through) that I may never be asked to engage with gardening again. Ever, ever.

So there you are. YMMV etc

OP -you've hit the nail on the head (for me) with "it is just a chore like emptying the dishwasher or cleaning the bathrooms"
My other half loves gardening which makes our garden a nicer place to spend time in. I'll mow the lawn and help with things like hedge trimming or ripping out large shrubs / trees etc - basically unskilled manual labour. However there is no expectation that I will be helping her plant thousands of bulbs, move things around, prune things etc.
She knew I hated gardening when we bought a place with a garden and I gave fair warning that anything other than minimal maintenance of lawns and the like would be down to her. She was (and is) happy with that.
I do get to do most DIY involving power tools, electrics, plumbing etc though. Whether I want to or not!

now that I have a lot more time to myself

I guess that is the crux of the problem. I am extremely time poor so I don't like giving over my valuable spare time to something that I get no pleasure from.

Perchy, what was wrong with that lone stray log?

I enjoy gardening, as it means going to the garden centre and indulging in their lovely cakes.

Perchy, what was wrong with that lone stray log?

That’s my measuring log. All other logs are sized against it

Logarithmic scale innit

I’m with you op. The worst bit is it’s all on the bloody floor. I really don’t want to get on my hands and knees to pull up one green thing, to replace it with another. It just keeps growing too. Mowing the lawn is effectively outside hoovering with a noisier less reliable hoover. I love tinkering with engines but cannot be arsed with the mower. I just tip it on its side when it starts to die because the carb needs new seals or some other boring crap.

I'm the same.

I have no problem with gardening if it is your past time & hobby. It gets you outside, keeps you fit & I can see how it can be good for mental well-being.

But for me, I want my garden to be as easy to look after as possible without just being a large slab of concrete.
I can't remember the names of plants, I don't know or care to know when & how I should prune, trim & chop things & I know nothing about choosing plants that complement each other, grow well in certain sun/cloud/shade/soil type combinations.

My Wife has a habit of going to the garden centre, chooses a load of random stuff & then plonks it in the ground. Generally the nice looking bits die while the horrible stuff thrives & goes nuts.

It's not even like we spend that much time sitting out there enjoying it. The only time we are generally 'in the garden' are when we are doing something to it.

I've spent many a weekend knelt on the ground pulling weeds up thinking what a perfect day it would be for a cycle. Bit stupid really.

Well I flippin love it. Spent this morning out on the trails and have been pottering in the garden all afternoon. I'm growing a fair bit from seed this year as well as the usual veg, am leaving part of the lawn unmown to get more wildlife (and sowed a nectar wild flower mix on that patch last year), we got a hedgehog on the wildlife camera last night and I've just been watching newts in the pond while drinking coffee.

You can keep garden centres though! Too many years visiting wholesale nurseries means I can't abide them, even the ones with cake. And it involves "going shopping" which I loathe with a passion similar to the way the OP feels about gardening.

At least with decorating, the room will stay like that for a few years. Whereas in the garden you've got to keep weeding/mowing the lawn.

I hate gardening

So employ a gardener. You get more time to go out and do other things, someone else gets paid employment, and your wife is satisfied. Winners all round!

I have a strategy for dealing with things that I hate - sign up to my exclusive life coaching sessions to find out what it could be....

I hate it too, but I like having a nice garden that we can sit in and barbecue and pizza oven and just kick back under the event shelter that was last summer's best puchase and was put up again two days ago. I sunk 4 threaded sleeve into the deck, which take eye bolts that the shelter fixes down to, so it's here come rain or shine until October now.

I'm a sense of eternal shame to my Dad; his family were market gardeners and he spends every waking hour he can gardening, pruning, taking cuttings, in his little greenhouse growing his own veg and toms....... his lawn's like the Lords outfield and his borders are like Wisley.

Amid this general hate, the one bit of gardening I absolutely despise is that we have no side passage, to get to the garden you need to go through the garage and utility room. And it's too narrow for the wheelie bin so everything has to go into green sacks and be carried through. The utility room's an assault course of laundry baskets and dog baskets to trip you up, then the garage has workbenches and vices and handlebars so that what you haven't already spilt then gets snagged and spilt in the garage, which smells all summer of decaying grass cuttings. Everything I cut down, or dig up, or cut through has to be then cut down into pieces small enough to go in the bags, and then the bags have t be light enough to be able to lift head high to avoid the garage traps. It takes ****ing hours extra - if it was just a case of power tooling the **** out of the overgrown bits and then dumping in the bin it would be still mainly intolerable, but it isn't AND I HATE IT!!!

I love it.

Pottering about i can use up the whole day or i can get in a power half hour before i start work. It calms me no end and sets me right up to achieve other things.

So employ a gardener. You get more time to go out and do other things, someone else gets paid employment, and your wife is satisfied

But look how that ended up for Lord Chatterley.

As someone who gardens for a living, long may you and many others continue to "hate gardening "
I'll happily take your hard earned ££ and come and garden for you 😉😊😊

We take the Shawshank Redemption approach to gardening; we plant stuff be it seeds or seedlings or even full plants and then it gets busy livin' or gets busy dyin'. No mollycoddling, no greenhouse stuff, 'You're a plant, deal with it'.

Steeling myself to tackle this.  I hate gardening too 🙂

I’m with you OP.

It almost ruins the return of good weather to know you'll be arguing with the one you love about the futility of weeding, trimming and cutting on a nice spring/summer weekend.

I hate gardening

This. Hiring a gardener# was the single best thing I've done for this house. Garden looks fabulous. I'd be happy in a flat with a nice balcony, but Mrs TiRed has some Victorian Gardener aspirations.

#Professional horticulturalist who just so happens to garden for Her Majesty no less.

How the other half live!

😉

CheesybeanZ
Full Member

As someone who gardens for a living, long may you and many others continue to “hate gardening ”
I’ll happily take your hard earned ££ and come and garden for you 😉😊😊

You see I always thought this was the case, it's distribution of wealth isn't it.
My gardener, Kyle is a polite knowledgeable very reasonably priced gardener who also bought my wife a bunch of flowers for her birthday one year 😀

I love gardening! It's my job and I still love doing my own garden. Don't know where you live but weather here looks shite. Gales and freezing cold all weekend. Great excuse to stay inside and be lazy. If she's that keen maybe she can crack on with it?

I don't like garden maintenance, mowing lawns, cutting hedges and weeding etc. Actually planting new things and trying to improve my garden I find much more interesting, almost satisfying.

Apparently hedge trimming and digging a new flower bed is the order of events.

Aren't birds nesting now?

I like it, well the maintenance side of things, good job as it's my job, I also volunteer as a gardener and recently took on an allotment that's in a right state.

Anyway OP tell your wife that you cannot cut any hedges until the end of August, nesting season int it, can't cut hedges or trees*

(*well you can if look for nests and bird activity and find none)

Can't say I hate it as such, but it's something I'll put off for as long as I can. Then there's no choice but to do it, and I feel quite satisfied about it.

What I really do hate though is the amount of crap a 35m2 garden can produce - my garden really is that small, it's more of a back yard than a garden, it's got slate flooring and green all around... And the ivy that covers up the back chain fence is my nemesis. How much waste can one 10m stretch of ivy produce???

Worth it though, when the weather turns hot and those lazy summer evenings outside having a glass of wine, with the green all around to absorb the summer heat.

I have a strategy for dealing with things that I hate – sign up to my exclusive life coaching sessions to find out what it could be….

You are iDave AICMFP!

OP, I feel your pain. I also hate gardening! Happily moved to a house with a low maintenance one. Bit of lawn mowing, and we've just paid a friend to trim the hedge in the back garden.

Status update

I can confirm that I still hate gardening. Been butchering beech hedge for two hours instead of riding my bike.

Along with opera, hill climbing, marriage, vegetables and work, it's one of those things I decided that life would be better if I enjoyed and now do.

Go full mindfulness on it's arse - understand that you can't win, the more you do, the more needs to be done.
It's like being an adult, or that ancient bloke who had to roll that stone uphill - Geoff Capes?
Accept it.
Do it well.
Revel in the futility of it all.

If that doesn't work, try psychedelics and talking to bees.

I hate gardening too gone the route this year of employing a gardener and also have some other company doing the lawn care apparently they are going to make it like a bowling green (yeah right).

I just convinced Mrs F we should leave the garden to do it’s own thing for environmental reasons. Let nature do what it wants. Plants and weeds (which are free plants) coexist and it attracts plenty of bees and butterflies. The kids have destroyed the lawn, which is ace and I whacked a trampoline and an Asgard on the lawn too. Even less of the bastard thing left now.

Just a rusted Cortina and an abandoned sofa away from true Onslow.

I can’t remember the names of plants, I don’t know or care to know when & how I should prune, trim & chop things & I know nothing about choosing plants that complement each other, grow well in certain sun/cloud/shade/soil type combinations.

see i follow the "see what happens" approach. plant it, whatever its called, thingy, you know the one with the big leaves and the purple flowers. See what happens. If i don't like it i move it.

that ancient bloke who had to roll that stone uphill

Sisyphus was that man!

I'm not particularly fond of gardening, but as the Mrs is on half term she had filled up three 1tonne bags of rubbish. Friday she asked me to go to the tip to empty them. Argument ensued, I didn't want to sit in a queue for the whole day, but I also didn't want to re-visit the argument every half hour. So I went to the tip. 4 hours of my day sat in the car not going anywhere.

Wow - council here has a booking system so you get a time slot. Works well. 4 hrs waiting?! That’s mad, and probably only encourages the fly tippers.

Also cleared up the garden yesterday, made it nice for the new Ratten furniture that’s on pre order becuase it’s either delayed on its way through a well known canal or there’s a run on outdoor lockdown seating.

I hated the gardening but quite looking forward to working outside with a strong coffee during a warm summer morning.

4 hours?! That’s mental! We have a chunk of land over the stone wall adjacent to our garden. Nowt more than scrub with a few small trees on really. Bumped into the owner a few months back and asked if he’d consider selling. He was quite rude so guess where all my garden rubbish now goes! 😀

I thoroughly enjoy gardening although it can be strenuous at times. The worst jobs are collecting and disposing of the leaves from the trees bordering the garden, the first cut of the too high hedges and trying to deal with a damp, mossy lawn.

Planting and tending is great- I get to see the fruit (veg & flowers) of my labours. it's a slow-burn thing though, taking months (or years) to get what I'm hoping for.

My lawn is a mess at the moment having been scarified to bits (two ton bags of moss removed!) sanded and reseeded.As usual loads of bulbs are already in - Snake's Head fritillary is my favorite flower. Plus seeds planted up in the in poly house, ready to be planted out later.

Crocusses are finished now but have been replaced by the daffs and the primroses. The hostas are waking up too. Celandines about to go balistic.

@ timbog160 "He was quite rude so guess where all my garden rubbish now goes! 😀"

If you are really chucking your waste onto somebody else's plot you are wrong. Plain and simple. Hopefully you are joking and are actually doing the right thing. We'll probably never know but here's hoping.

If I had the money/time I'd rework our garden to be mostly lawn with a few trees. I hate the fact it takes time away from me that could be spent with the family or biking. But at least it's outdoors.

Out of interest how much is a gardener roughly?

Breadcrumb - We currently pay £12 per hour Wakefield Pro Rata - London £42 2 Hours minimum (Daylight Robbery)

It’s like being an adult, or that ancient bloke who had to roll that stone uphill – Geoff Capes?

Ha ha! 😀

My neighbour has discovered a big lump of concrete in his garden this weekend, that he wants removing so he can plant things. I'd love to help him, of course, but my back is playing up a bit at the moment...

I love mowing a lawn and strimming the edges to make it look neat. Quite like any job that makes a big visual difference, but don't like pulling out weeds or cleaning the pond. Foxes have torn the lining on my pond so need to repair it.

It gets a bit much if I don't have time for a week or two, or if the weather is bad. Then it just becomes a chore.

Last year was perfect as it was so dry. It made the garden less work and look great.

Breadcrumb – We currently pay £12 per hour Wakefield Pro Rata – London £42 2 Hours minimum (Daylight Robbery)

Paying someone barely over minimum wage, to do something that requires good physical strength and fitness, as well as a depth of knowledge, is disgusting. That such trades have become devalued to such an extent, is shameful. £42 an hour in London for such work isn't 'daylight robbery', it's just about acceptable. You can't do a full 8/10 hour day, as you're travelling for some of it (and not getting paid for that), you have tools and protective equipment/clothing to have to lay out for, a vehicle to run, etc. Gardners aren't on 40 hour weeks, they're lucky if they get paid for half of that. Life in Wakefield might be a little less expensive than London, I grant you, but £12 an hour? Really?

Yeah that's nuts. Anyone self employed on 12 per hour will be on less than minimum wage once expenses, holiday and sick are taken into account. It's this kind of thing that means i never charge by the hour anymore. Look at the job and give a set price so the tight wads can't pick over your hourly worth.

Never had a set price quote turned down. People always seem happy with the price for the work they see in front of them but they are sometimes suprised by how quickly i complete it and i know some would have declined the quote if I'd given an hourly price. But after spending thousands on the best tools and 15 years honing my skills I can do more work for the same money than uncle pete at £10 an hour cash in hand with his B and q lawn mower.

Bridges - Gardener has his rate just like most other service providers I have a choice to take up offer or not why would I even query charge unless I felt too much + he hardly does the hard work which is left up to the lawn treatment guys.

I just convinced Mrs F we should leave the garden to do it’s own thing for environmental reasons

That's my approach - however it just gets taken over by brambles. Every few years (once they get to around 5ft high and complete coverage) I cut them back and vow I'll keep on top of it more (or get artificial grass laid...) but never do. In short - I think even a 'wild' garden probably takes a fair bit of maintenance to keep invasive stuff at bay.

+1 for getting a gardener in, that's my dad does (he hates gardening) after my mum passed away, I don't think it costs him much (mostly just weeding and maintenance of perennial stuff)

I hate gardening too. My neighbours must despise me cos they've all got immaculate lawns. Unlike the OP, I have no wife to make me do shite I hate doing, so garden is a mass of weeds and random overgrown bushes. I really couldn't make myself care.

I love gardening and the kids are starting to show an interest too. Win-win!
Can't beat a well edged & mown lawn with plenty of stuff popping up. Did a new border last year during lockdown and couldn't remember all the things I put in there...it's a bit like slow-Christmas.
Got plenty of bird feeders out too and they're getting more friendly and tend to stick around when I'm out there...so I whistle to them then translate their response to the kids..they think I'm Dr Dolittle 😆

I, too, am Spartacus hate gardening.

My wife loves the idea of gardening. Dreaming about how it might look if someone who did love it was to maintain it tirelessly through thick and thin. What actually happens is that some random and usually expensive plants return from a garden centre, are planted somewhere, and then wither and die, or freeze and die, or get waterlogged and die, or get eaten by insects and die, or are fallen into by a child and die, because four days of what we'll call gardening, randomly spread throughout the year, is not enough to maintain leafy plants in pots through a hot dry period, or succulent plants through a cold season. Those four days are a colossal waste of money and effort. We now have about 15 large ornamental pots in which only grass or weed is growing.

Sadly even for the grass, we have two dogs who seem intent on killing as much of it as possible by pissing on it and digging holes in it.

My ideal garden contains gravel. Or decking. Or paving slabs.

Oh, and a barbecue.

Go for a wildlife garden.
Build a pond,
Don't mow all the lawn (I leave a big patch) for the insects,
As mentioned please don't cut the hedges until after the nesting season - August,
Plant wildlife friendly plants and flowers that help the birds and bees, these mostly look after themselves.
Grow a few salad crops, fruit and veg, this may spur you on, when you pick and eat the fresh produce of your labours.

My ideal garden is a fruit orchard next to a field full of sheep, just open the gate occasionally to keep the grass down and the ground fertilised. 👍

My ideal garden contains gravel. Or decking. Or paving slabs

When I moved in (20 years ago...) the lawn was in a state so I took the easy option and got 2 or 3 tonnes of pebble gravel stuff delivered, but a thick ground sheet down (the type that says it prevents any growth). Probably got too much gravel as it's was 4-5 inches deep. Was fine for a couple of years, then weeds started seeding in the gravel itself and a year or two later the brambles appeared, some had run along the top of the sheeting but most seemed to have forced it's way through the sheet itself. So I'm back to square one - I think it's either return it to a lawn and get a gardener in or paving slabs. Oh and my decking is starting to rot (to be fair it's stuff my dad built on the cheap and I haven't done anything to it since it was laid 15 years ago).

Replacing a bunch of deck every 15 or 20 years sounds like a bargain to me.

For anything green, there's weed killer.

My ideal garden contains gravel.

Ideal only if you like cleaning up cat shit.

My wife has just announced, with delight, that the weather looks nice at the weekend so it will be a perfect time to do loads of gardening.

"That's nice dear, have fun, im off out on my bike. see you later!"

Gardners aren’t on 40 hour weeks, they’re lucky if they get paid for half of that

Mine gets accommodation. he does it for the love of gardening. He also has some other major clients. We do the dog-sitting.

Again please stay away from weed killer or slug pellets. These are so bad for the wildlife, which will do the job for you.
If you really want to get rid of weeds, chickens are good, or pigs (they will just completely ruin your garden, but you can start again). :O)

Strong aversion I'd say rather than outright hate, but for posting purposes yeah, I hate gardening. But looking through the other thread titles I also hate all things iPhone/apple, inflatable kayaks, abusive drivers, BBQs, top gear, sawing sleepers, coronavirus and related restrictions, running now my ankle's still not right, Brexit, Boris the Johnson, financial advice... Most things really.

I'm ambivalent about garage floors.