A new garden emerges

Winter has seen a change in the landscape at the Robertson villa.
When we bought the property two years ago, a thin strip of lawn ran alongside the garden path at the side of the house, opening out to a small rectangle expanse of green fronting onto the courtyard. Pretty boring I'm sure you'll agree. (Just in case you noticed, it's the angle of the camera that makes the fence look as if it is leaning in; this was the real estate agent's photo.)

I was itching for a garden. We'd only been in the house a few weeks, when I dug out a bit of lawn and created a small garden at the side and along the fence at the back.

But it wasn't enough for me. We never used the lawn as there was so little of it, although it did add a cooling element in high summer. But mowing and edging were onerous jobs in such a small space. So I took the plunge in early winter and began to dig out all the lawn and existing plants.

The first sod is turned

Three weeks of hard but satisfying work and eventually the lawn was gone. I dug in mushroom compost, mulch, pea straw, blood and bone, soil conditioner - anything I liked the sound of at the nursery, in it went.

Now, of course, I had a large swathe of soil, and it started to intimidate me. What should I plant? Did I need a theme? What effect did I want? Was this going to be expensive? I called in the services of my good friend Kathy who is a whiz at garden design, and together we planned the new garden. What I wanted was easy care, hardy in both the winter rains and in the summer heat, and pretty.

We had to get the structure right first, so after a lot of discussion we decided to put in a path and a central feature. Off we went to a landscaping place that was going out of business, so we were able to get pavers very cheap, plus a pedestal.  I was also keeping in mind that the neighbour's crimson bougainvillea falls gracefully over our fence and dominates the area for at least 5 months of the year, so that had to be incorporated in our design. If you look closely at this photo you'll see the recently pruned bougainvillea in its dormant phase peeking over the top of the fence.

Here Kathy begins planting some succulents around the pedestal.

We retained the existing frangipani, the bird of paradise, and the cumquat, and added a New Zealand flax, succulents, lavender, statice, gaura, salvia, ground covers, all with a blue/purple tinge and with white accents from the butterfly bush, daisies and alyssum. Slowly it began to take shape.

Lots of watering in with Seasol, and then I applied a blanket of small bark chip mulch.

I felt it needed some height so I purchased a standard white rose.

Of course everything looks so small and itty-bitty right now; the roses are bare, the frangipani consists of three thick bare branches, and the gaura has been clipped back to ground level. But in spring and summer it should be a delight. I swear you won't be able to see any of the bark chips. And then I'll plant some winter flowering plants so it will look good all year round.

I'll keep you posted.