r/Glasgow Tools

When we moved into our flat almost 3 years ago the back court was so overgrown you couldn’t even walk up to the bin shed. Turns out it hadn’t been used or tended to in well over 30 years (as we could tell from neighbours who spoke to us afterwards and the dates on the rubbish we found).

It took a solid few weekends of hacking away at the brambles to begin to see the ground. Then multiple weekends of digging up brambles, burning & putting bramble specific poison on the ground. They somehow haven’t come back at all since we did that, which is a surprise!

It was a huge amount of work, only really possible thanks to some help from friends and family. Be ready to find a lot a lot a lot of rubbish in and amongst the dirt.

I was really optimistic at first because lots of neighbours showed interest in what we were doing. Seemed like we were going to get a good community effort going, but have felt quite dejected since because at least half of the people that use the court continue to use it as a dumping ground.

That said, people regularly hang their washing out there now and take their kids out to play. It’s lovely to see.

We’ve not done anything to it since except for trim the grass, probably more so because I’m not sure what to do next! So it will be good to hear what suggestions people have here.

I’ll see if I can find some photos