Garden Makeover

Another blog, amazingly after only a few days, due to having time, now that the weather has turned cold, and wet, and I cannot be outside.    This morning I took Piper for a walk on the beach, first time for days, and got absolutely soaked from the rain.   No waterproof coat, or over trousers, so I learnt a valuable lesson, go prepared for the worst.   Piper enjoyed a good run on the beach.   Her fur repelled the rain, unlike my down jacket.   The waterproofing solution did not work there.

A garden makeover, two weeks of hard work, for both Darren and me.   Darren had two weeks holiday, and spent half of it working on our garden.   He planned it, measured it all out, did most of the hard work, and came to the garden centres with me, so that I bought the correct plants.

  The original garden, as shown in the sales brochure for the house.   And yes, it did look really good at the time.   The fountain worked, and there were no weeds in the stones or in the cracks between the pavers.   And you might say, why change it all. 

Darren kept the pittosporum hedges beautifully trimmed, and they looked beautiful until they became infested with a bugs/or bugs in the form of a fluffy white bug, plus a scaly brown one that stuck to the branches and sucked all the moisture out of the wood.   Mind you the scaly brown insects may have been part of the life cycle of the fluffy white ones.   The front hedge turned brown during the last heat wave, with sections of another hedge going the same way.   All hedges were infested with the insects.   The reason could be due to me watering the hedges from the top, during the first summer we were here, or it may have happened anyway.   Pittosporum trees (native to NZ) are not the hardiest of trees for our harsh climate in South Australia. 

The fountain stopped working when we moved in, and the wiring for it, was dodgy to say the least, so we never had it fixed.   I filled the basin with soil and grew some plants in it.   Not the same.

And the stones!   The bane of my life.   A safety hazard as we had to walk over them to get to the house.   The weeds grew among the stones and in the cracks of the pavers.  I tried using an organic spray, and weeding them, but the task became harder and harder, and in the end I gave up.   The previous owners used a weed killer, but I did not want to use the same method.   Not good for the environment, the wildlife, the dog or me!

So after much deliberation, planning and discussion we finally got started after Easter.

Darren lifted the pavers a few weeks before Easter so that we could work on the stones.   The idea was that I spend a few hours a day picking up stones.  Great in theory but not in practice.  Picking up stones is a soul destroying job.   It takes so long, and the stones are so heavy!  The stones on the top were okay, clean and easily picked up, but the ones underneath were buried in dirt, layers of them.   Of course Darren helped whenever he could, and  I was lucky that Emma and Steve came and filled a number of containers and took them home to use, and one of our neighbours also filled a couple of wheel barrows and took them home with her.   But the removeful of these stones seemed to go on for weeks and weeks. 

I originally had an idea of buying small wire cages, filling them with stones, and making garden benches.   I gave this idea up very early due to the cost of the cages, but mostly because stones were very heavy, and filling cages was going to be a difficult job.   

In the end I found that raking up the stones that were buried deep in the dirt, made the job easier.

Darren cut the hedges down.

All loaded onto the trailer.

Then Darren started laying the pavers, with the help of Jay.  Very heavy work but they did a brilliant job.

So what to do with the fountain.  It looked odd beside the paved area!   Out of balance.  No one in the family was interested in moving it to the back garden, where I thought the birds would love to use it for swimming.   It was another of my not so brilliant ideas.

So I sold it, via Facebook Marketplace.   Surprisingly there were a  number of offers, but I took the first offer of $200.   A woman turned up with her brother, and trailer, to collect it.   Of course it was heavy, very heavy.   The mermaid had been glued to the bowl, so that was one very heavy and very large piece.   The stand came in two parts.   We rang Darren, Emma and Steve to come around and lend a hand to slide it onto the trailer.   It took five people to move it.   What a weight.   We then found that the transformer was under the pedestal, and it was wrapped in gaffa tape.   So electrically unsafe.   There were a few spiders there as well, redbacks of course.

The stones were given away, via Marketplace.   Two piles of them, one pile cleaner than the other due to cleaning the first pile up because I was going to put them into the wire cages.

We had lots of offers but I must admit I let them go to a man, with a trailer, who I knew could shovel the stones himself.   I wanted no part in getting rid of them.   He was really pleased with them and was going to put them down between concrete strips in his driveway.   Good luck with the weeds.   Perhaps he uses weedkiller.

No more stones!   Just clean concrete and pavers.   I do not ever want to see stones again.  I hate stones.  

The last hedge, which I thought at first I would save, but changed my mind.   It was full of the same bug/s, and yes I know I could have sprayed the hedge, but I had had enough!   Of course I should have realised this when Darren cut the first two hedges down, as he could have put the third hedge onto the same trailer, and saved $56 at the recycling depot.   Oh well, I needed to really think about the last hedge first.  Darren is so patient.

The last hedge nearly gone.   When the previous owners drive past they are going to be distraught when they see their precious hedges are no more. 

I have not mentioned yet, about all the soil that was removed from all three garden beds, and the lawn area.   Some of it went onto the vegetable beds, and a friend took the rest.   Darren put down the dripper hoses, and connected them all up to the irrigation pipe, and covered the garden beds with organic garden mulch.

Finally we ordered buffalo grass, which Darren put on the lawn area.    Instant lawn.   I so love instant lawn.  When I think of all the lawns I have created over the years, all painstakingly watered every few hours in order to get the seeds to germinate.   The seeds that escaped the mouths of the local birds!

The last of the lawn, in the photograph below, was given to the first bidder on Facebook Marketplace.  The person used it to repair a lawn.   So love that site. 

And finally, planting time.    So what have we done.   In front of the windows there are Lilly pilly trees to make into small hedges.   Robust trees.   I like that.   In front are standard roses, white and yellow, with small obelias in between them.   The front garden have the geraniums at the front, which of course were in front of the old hedge, plus white and yellow shrub roses behind them, and against the pavers there are Japanese Box shrubs to train into a small hedge.   I have put in lots of pansies to give a bit of colour over winter.   All very formal. but seems to suit the house, and of course Darren was meticulous about every aspect of the garden makeover.   

Did people outside of South Australia know that Adelaide, and the surrounding area, is a rose growing area.   Apparently the soil and weather conditions are perfect.    They certainly flower for a long time, from spring through to autumn.   And are very easy care.    Good news.

Also Japanese Box shrubs are hardier than English Box shrubs.  Well news to me too.   

The post person loves the letter box standing on its own.   There is now no need to find a way around the hedge in order to find the letter box.   

The caravan will be put on the paved area on the left hand side.    We can use the garage again, once I clean the clutter up.   It is amazing how quickly an empty space fills up.  

Hopefully it will be cooler at the front during summer time, although there is still plenty of concrete, which unfortunately we need for our vehicles.

Only one mishap.    Piper chewed out the elastic side panel of one of my Wellingtons, the ones bought at the expensive garden centre in the UK.   Very handy Wellingtons too.  I left them beside the patio door, and Piper entertained herself one evening by taking out the inner soles, and chewing the elastic side panel.   Could have been worse.   At least they are still wearable.

Piper now has an uninterrupted view of the street, and spends most of her day there, when not playing or walking or following me around.   She also has a good view of who to bark at too! 

A big thank you to Darren, as I could not have achieved this garden makeover on my own.