My Work In Progress

I moved in with my partner 2 months ago now, and inherited my current garden, and slowly, very slowly, have been chipping away.

It's far from finished, as, due to much travelling and long hours at work the garden had become a touch overgrown and weed riddled.

But, this is what has been done thus far...

First jobs were to obviously mow the lawn and cull the weeds! This in itself was a mighty task, as, although the block is only 436m², it is well proportioned, leaving us with a decent garden.

There is/was a hedge of orange Browellia.. Never recommended to plant this in the ground!!! Its a menace, going absolutely mad, its root system is dense and thick and sucks the moisture from surrounding ground so little will grow. It is also impossible to remove!

Due to this little fellow using it as a ladder to escape, I am having to try.

           (Don't let this face fool you!)

After drilling about 20 holes and pouring neat round up into them, the hedge still lives.

My next task with this is to physically chop at it with an axe and manually remove as many roots as possible.

Luckily for us, we have a beautiful group of bananas planted down one section of garden. These produce small, chunky, highly sweet fruit. We think they are lady fingers.

After this fruiting season I will be chopping down and mulching a majority of the plants, as they only fruit once in their life and am unsure of which ones have previously fruited.

This will allow them to reshoot and produce new fruit. I will be using the mulch from the old bananas to fertilise and keep moisture in the ground for the new bananas. It will also add nitrogen and organic matter into the soil.

As mentioned previously,  I love natives! So of course this had to be one of the first things I planted. They provide us colour and food for the bees when its cold and wet, and potentially  not much else is around.

This is my list so far:

. Manuka (teatree)

. Cascading pink tea tree

. Grevillea 'John Evans'..? Dog ate the label

. Grevillea 'Legacy Flame'

. Eremophilla maculata. Magenta

. Hibbertia grossularifolia

. Leschenaultia biloba

. Geraldton wax (miniature flowering variety, dog ate this label too)

. Gastrolobium 

. Calothamnus rupestris

. Brachyscome mullifida

. Acacia denticulosa

I can't wait to see it all in flower!

In this section I've added a pond for the local wildlife to drink from on the warmer days, and added some floating plants for the bees to land on safely. I'll be expanding this and planting a few native grasses for the skinks (there's many). I'll also be trying to build a frog hide from recycled pvc found in curbside collection (they will be thoroughly washed to ensure they're  clean of harmful products).

My next mission  was get a bit of produce happening. Although I can't plant anything in the back yard yet, I have a front yard! 

I removed and rehomed some parlour palms that had strangely been planted in full, scorching sun, and made a trip to bunnings for a heap of manure and compost.

Next, a few basics.

Pumpkins! We love pumpkin especially butternut, I bought a punnet of basic butternuts, and sent some back home with my mum, why not share! And two heritage pumpkins:

. Wrinkled butternut

. Musquee de provence

Also sweetcorn, parsley and some heritage celery (admittedly not doing too well).

I also managed to find a few pieces of garden art from curbside and added them for a bit of extra interest.

As with any garden ... to be continued...