Inside, our lounge lizard felines are also enjoying the sun from the top level of their cat castle.
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| Enjoying the early morning warming sun |
As I near the end of my sabbatical year, I am very conscious that some extra effort may be required to ensure all is completed by the end of July and so I've enlisted my family to provide some extra assistance for this task.
Day 1
We ordered 2.5 cubic metres of soil, which we believe will be approximately 30 wheelbarrow loads.
The garden bed before:
My two lonely gardenias and half a dozen miniature roses are all that remain from our previous garden. Looking at how little soil surrounds the first gardenia, I am surprised that it still alive.
The garden at the end of Day 1.
The dirt pile at the end of Day 1. We've moved 18 barrow loads so far.
Already our muscles have started to stiffen I think we'll hurt tomorrow!
Day 2 was fairly slow as I reached some clusters of couch and buffalo grass that needed to be removed.
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| The dirt pile at the end of Day 2 |
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| The garden bed at the end of Day 2 |
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| Another 4 metres of soil |
I've put up a rough string line, positioned a metre from the retaining wall, as a guide for positioning the middle row of retaining rocks. I will follow this as closely as possible, but small deviations caused by the irregular shapes and sizes of the rocks will be OK.
Along the way I've also removed 4 miniature roses and will need to treat them like bare-rooted roses. They are all waiting in a bucket of water until their place in the garden is ready. This won't be too long, hopefully just a day or so.
On Day 3 I found a belt of nut grass and it is now clear why we have found it so difficult to keep this garden weed-free. When we created Mark I of this garden, we weeded and removed the poor topsoil. Many of the weeds would have been nut grass, buffalo and couch grass. Back then we had no idea what nut grass was, nor any clue as to its tenacity and dogged determination to survive. We dug down about 6 inches and then added rich garden soil and all looked pretty good. As the years passed, the nut-grass awakened from its dormant state from within the clay bed below the garden soil and made its way to the surface, thriving in the rich soil and multiplying many-fold. Because its origins lie so deeply below the surface, our weeding efforts have merely had the effect of giving it a light pruning that encouraged growth! I'm not sure I've got all those nasty little nuts, even now, but hopefully any that regrow will be in looser garden soil rather than in the sandstone sub-layer, and easier to remove.
At the end of Day 3 this is how my garden looks.
Day 4
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| Today we finished adding the new soil and creating the wall dividing the two levels |
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| A reasonable amount of soil remains |
Time to marshal the waiting plants and decide what will go where.
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| Many of the plants are partially dormant and don't look brilliant. They're not dead, just sleeping |
Looking at the pots of plants and the enormous expanse of empty garden, I feel a little daunted and don't really know where to start. My mother's sage advice was to simply place them on the garden bed and keep on moving them around until I am happy with their positioning, then plant them.
Simple advice and quite logical really. So here goes!
Some of the positioning is easy as I had already decided the gardenias should go on the top level to keep the other two company. I have mainly roses and a mass of other perennials so I probably need to see to the roses first so I can be sure there is enough room between them to allow them to spread as they inevitably will once no longer constrained by their plastic pots. I'm still a little reluctant to plant too much too quickly as I am sure the soil level will fall as the newly aerated soil compacts down and it will be more difficult to add more soil once the garden is planted out.
After looking at the arrangement for a couple of days, the planting began in earnest. In total more than 90 plants were planted, plus another half dozen punnets of seedlings.
In addition, I planted a heap of Freesia bulbs, Freesias being one of the few spring flowering bulbs that won't result in either cardiac arrest or renal failure for my cats should they choose to nibble. Ideally all spring flowering bulbs should be been tucked into the garden in May or June at the latest so I don't hold too much hope of them flowering this year.
Amongst the roses are assorted salvias and other perennials. I've also planted a heap of bloomers, mostly pansies, violas and snap dragons for some instant colour. Pansies and violas are a couple of favourites of mine, I just love the cute little faces.
I have planted a couple of Ivy Geraniums under some small obelisks that hopefully they will climb.
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| Ivy Geranium |
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| Ivy Geranium |
There is space in the new garden for just three more roses so I must choose wisely.
In determining the positioning of the roses, one intrigued me. It is Brindabella Eyes for You. Apparently ideal for Australian conditions and more resistant to diseases such as black spot, Brindabella Eyes for You is quite a unique rose. Bred from Rosa persica (syn. Hulthemia persica), it features an "eye" in the centre of the flower. and is the first in the "Eyeopener" series. There is some debate as to whether this is really a rose, given its parentage, botanists have reclassified Rosa persica to a new sub-genus, Hulthernia, but who really cares? This is one I'm happy to leave the experts to fight out.
I'll grant you it is a tough rose, due to an oversight, it wasn't watered for weeks and when I found it in a very sorry state I thought it may have GTG (gone to God) but decided to give it a good drink anyway. It dropped all its dead leaves and promptly grew a new set!
The thing that intrigues me is its alleged height. The plant I have is tiny and based on this I had assumed it was a miniature rose. I have had this one for around 2 years and it has always remained tiny. I have found a number of different optimum height estimates, ranging from 1.2 to 1.5 metres! Based on my plant, I can't really see it.
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| Brindabella Eyes for You |
I didn't prune the roses back as they planted out. This was in part due to the fact that our green waste garbage bin was almost at capacity and unable to hold any additional organic material and partly due to me not wanting to see the new garden as a row of sticks just yet
Thanks goes to my hubby for lending the muscle needed to help me get to this stage, without it I'd still have a long way to go.
Although this by no means signifies the end of our garden revamp, for there is mulch to be laid, more gardens to be refreshed and we need to coax the grass back to life, it was very exciting to plant out this garden and see my potted gypsies begin their new adventure in the world. It felt very right that it should happen on the eve of the day I begin my own exciting new adventure in the big wide world.
NB for more information on the origins of this garden, see my earlier blog: Garden Wars - It's a Game of Attrition
