We've just moved back into our house after 5 years of having tenants in it and my garden needs a makeover too!
We'll start with treating the whole yard with wettasoil (to improve the amount of water that goes into the ground - you might need to think about putting down claybreaker if you're on heavy clay) then next we'll weed and dig over all the garden beds. Next we'll get a truck load of high grade organic compost - and spread that over the beds. Final layer will be some organic mulch - I'm thinking something like peastraw which is fairly cheap here but will rot down and improve the soil further. We'll think about a more permanent mulch-layer later on once the soil's a bit healthier.
Finally we'll remove all the dead plants, and give a light trim to anything that's likely to survive. By that stage it will be getting on to late summer/early autumn and we can decide what we're going to plant into the gaps we have.
My garden desperately needs a makeover.. luckily my sister has just finished her horticulture degree and she is going to design me a gorgeous garden and basically do all the work for me.
You could try calling Melb Uni Burnley campus where they study horticulture, and try offering your garden free for a uni student to come in and design for you for one of their projects? You might still end up having to do all the work, but they might (not sure though) tell you what to plant and how to fix the soil etc?
I'll ask my sister after work what kinds of projects they had...
otherwise you could pay a little for a grad student just to do the design and talk to you about what you want out of your garden, analyise your soil type etc, and tell you how to do the work, but you do the actual physical labour of digging everything up, fixing the soil, replanting etc.
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