A History of the Garden

I thought before I go any further I should provide some history of the garden.

We built this house well over a decade ago and established the garden from scratch. The soil is typical Canberra clay, with various attempts to improve areas over the years. The block slopes upwards from the street, which means soil, mulch, pavers, etc, have to be carted uphill from where they are delivered to the naturestrip. The original design had no retaining walls and included a large lawn in the back and a smaller one at the front. When water restrictions were introduced it was very discouraging trying to hand water sloping garden beds and we had many rocks on the site so I started using them to terrace the slopes. I also started putting paths through the plantings to make maintenance easier. Creating some definition and structure in the garden has made it look and work better. Seeing this, my husband has become more agreeable to spending money on things like retaining wall blocks. More recently we have reduced the size of the back lawn, replacing the central section with paving and enlarging the surrounding garden beds. We have also installed a rain water tank, and while on the one hand I am disappointed at the loss of more planting space on the other I am glad we had the space available in a rather undeveloped back area of the garden.

I think it says a lot about our early design abilities that one of the first things we did was plant a tree and within a few months realised it would need to be moved to make way for a footpath. I think we've improved since then but I don't think you ever stop learning.

What would I do differently? I would do the hardscaping before the planting! I would start earlier and do more to improve the soil. I would research plants more thoroughly before deciding whether/where to plant them. I would plant more groupings or patterns of the same plant rather than one of everything that catches my eye in the nursery.

23 July

The hebes are still flowering, and seem much appreciated by the bees. This one, a large variety planted when we first began this garden, has not looked its best during the drought but with the good rains we've had this year it has put on its best show in a long time.

Some of the relatively new white hebes that struggled over summer have somewhat recovered and one has produced a bloom. I think I will take some cuttings and try this variety in a more sheltered position.

The diosmas have an unexpected sprinkling of flowers.

There's new growth on the photinias. The first one is Photinia 'Allyn Sprite', a lovely very small variety that doesn't seem to be sold any more. The second one is Photinia 'Super Hedge', one of the newer fast growing varieties.

There's mounds of eucy mulch and forest litter waiting to be spread. Funny how mulch fashions have changed. When we had our first home, black plastic with tan bark over the top was all the rage. In our next garden we used eucy mulch, which was supposed to move around less and stick to slopes better. We didn't bother with the new improved version of black plastic, weedmat. Then it was recognised that eucy mulch could have drawbacks and mulches that break down more quickly and feed the soil came into favour, so in this garden we also tried sugar cane mulch, but it breaks down very quickly and it blows around easily. We still like eucy mulch for informal paths and sugar cane mulch in certain applications. But this year we're trying forest litter on the garden beds.

My husband has made a start on the mulch, and pruned the salvias too.

Flowering on 12 July

Hebes

Correa

Time to Get Started

Faced with the cyber equivalent of a daunting blank piece of paper I've been distracting myself by playing with templates and looking at other peoples blogs, which made me feel a little overwhelmed with choice and a little intimidated by the quality of the other blogs out there. I did make some progress though, after a conversation with my son I decided to have two blogs. One will be a basic record of the goings-on in our garden, what we do, when things bloom, etc. The other will be a more general blog though probably still plant and nature oriented.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my new blog!