There is a mountain of work to be done landscaping the front and back yards of our place. We focussed this weekend on the area surrounding LHS of the pool. We had to turn what was once grass beside the pool into a garden area to try and tie it into the existing garden area that surrounds the large retaining walls that seperate the levels of the back yard.
We sourced a wide variety of plants from our local nurseries including Purple Fountain Grass, some varieties of Strelitzia, Variegated Feather Reed, Phantom Mondo Grass, a number of different Macropidia (Kangaroo Paw) and some varieties of Cordylines including Pink Joy, there were other plants but their name and identity tags escape me. To help with the planting we also took cuttings from other plants in our garden these included Dracaena Massangeana, Dracaena Surprise, Reflexed Dracaena and Agave Attenuata.
The pool area was also turfed with a variety of Zoysia called Nara Native. Of course it is heralded by the growers as the best thing since sliced bread, we will see! For me the main advantage was its ability to tolerate salt.
The completed garden area was mulched with Hoop Pine bark, it is a curly bark mulch that is used widely in the area, the hooping or curly bark helps to keep the mulch in place on sloping surfaces, it works very effectively.
Our progress so far takes us from this...
To this...
Then this...
To make sure that all the new garden areas were well watered after I had to alter all the existing lawn and garden irrigation systems, it was no small task and is still not completed. The pool is in the middle of a lawned and garden area so the existing sprinklers and pipes were spraying directly over the pool, or cut by the excavators during pool construction. As you can imagine I had lots of holes to dig, pipes to lay or repair and sprinklers to change.
The garden edging was simple by comparison, given it was only a few metres to join the pool edge to the existing edge it didn't take too long. The next phase of the garden work is not so simple, there will be 40 or 50 metres of garden edging required, that is not something to look forward to and bagged concrete will no longer suffice to bed the edging pavers. Another trip or two to the garden supplies for cement, sand and aggregate is on the cards.
When living in Ballarat you take for granted the proximity of things and the ease of access to all manner of shops and retail outlets. To get the garden supplies, mulch, soil and rocks it is a 40km round trip to the nearest supplier. The nearest Coates Hire centre is 50km round trip and the nearest Bunnings is just around the corner from Coates. To use these trips to the best of your advantage you need to plan your weekend work to the finest detail, unfortunately I have not yet perfected this level of detail. Needless to say forgetting the smallest thing can be a little frustrating and waste a large chunk of your weekend.
Another busy weekend next week too, hope I can remember to put on sunscreen, I am not used to 24 degree days in the middle of July. In the past a weekend in the garden in July would mean fighting off frost bite not sunburn...
I really need to get cracking if I am any hope of finishing the gardens before the start of cricket season!
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