A year has gone by since I ripped out the existing front garden and began a journey towards a new one. It hasn't happened exactly as I planned, but of course that's the thrill of gardening. Hmmmm. Let's start at the beginning.
January 2019
Back in January, in the middle of a soaring heatwave, I decided to remove all the river rocks from our front garden. This is what it looked like when we saw the house for the first time, four years ago.
When we bought the property, I thought the rocks would give me a trouble-free, no-work garden, a relief after the acreage in Bolwarra we had just come from with its huge garden beds and the constant attention to manuring, composting and pruning, not to mention the everyday need to pick up the swathes of bark that peeled from the gum trees, all the things that go with a large country garden. For a while it was wonderful here, but it was difficult to work the clay soil, the stones generated a lot of heat in the summer, weeds settled between the stones and were hard to remove, and all I could plant were succulents.
So ... I made a rash decision in January 2019 to remove the rocks and start afresh. I worked in the early hours and in the late afternoon when the heat subsided. Here is where I got up to after a week.
While it was rather satisfying removing the rocks, I had to put them somewhere, so a pile started to form on the other side of the drive. It got progressively higher until I was able to give some to a friend and sell off the rest. Sitting on the ground scooping up the rocks was also rather contemplative, not to mention the enjoyment I got from neighbours stopping by for a chat - and encouragement.
It took me almost three months working solidly to remove all the rocks, many of which were embedded deep in the clay-ey soil. Here, some rocks are ready to be picked up by my friend. It was tiring, backbreaking and painstaking work. But my visions of what the new garden would look like kept me going.
April 2019
Finally, all the rocks were removed.
The next phase was to hire a landscaper to do the heavy stuff. A very nice man (from the delightfully named company Dirty Diggers) bulldozed the dead topsoil and clay and took it away. It was 1 April, but he was nobody's fool. He returned with lovely topsoil and spread it over the new garden bed. You can see that I left the rocks on the verge so people can park there (that is my story and I'm sticking to it, though I must say I was heartily sick of the rocks by this time).
Here comes the topsoil.
Now, what to plant? What was my vision? In my numerous previous moves I have had a suburban garden, a cottage garden surrounding an 1884 house, a deck garden on top of a three-storey converted factory and a 5-acre garden that included a lavender grove and orchard. I have collected loads of gardening books over the years covering everything from garden design, container gardens, courtyard gardens, rooftop gardens, gardens for a dry climate, native plants, herbs, roses, Australian country gardens, gardens of Tuscany, Moroccan courtyard gardens - you name it, I've probably got it.
So what would I do now for a trouble-free but gorgeous garden? I decided I'd go for 'hardy' and 'pretty', and did indeed make up a kind of plan and colour scheme of mauve/purple, red and white, green. But I'm the type of gardener who is bull-at-the-gate, overly enthusiastic, and 'If it looks good at the nursery, grow it. If it is given to you by a friend, plant it. If it looks amazing in a magazine, buy it'.
Accordingly, I was super impatient to get started. Even though I had a plan and colour scheme, the garden evolved, and not always to plan. I bought geraniums, lavender, statice, and salvia from a local nursery. My green-thumb daughter Kate gave me a voucher from a nursery in Victoria, so I had great fun choosing from their website. From them I selected some rosemary, sea holly, penstemon, ground covers and red-hot pokers.
Here is the first planting. While being careful to allow the plants to grow and expand, I was disappointed that the overall look was very stunted and sparse.
I then ordered three standard roses, but these were not to be delivered until early August, though I had already put in their stakes as you can see. I also selected a crepe myrtle tree but this will not be bought until spring, so I am being extremely patient. A neighbour gave me two salvias so I popped them into a space near the path, though I am not sure how big they will grow or what colour they are. (I'm afraid this is when my garden plan became unstuck.) Everything looked so small, but the autumn rains and sunshine began working their magic. Not long after the first rains came, I scattered tiny seeds of poppies, larkspur and canterbury bells that had been given to me. I wonder if they will come up?
It's a definite 'work in progress' as they say.
July- October 2019
With winter rains, the plants began to slowly grow. I bought the crepe myrtle I had picked out; it has white flowers in summer and set against the purple-black of the stems and trunks, they should look very showy.
The poppies went mad. Evidentally, I am not a very good scatterer of seeds and they grew in a thick clump, looking rather like a field of corn. Here they are - the pale pink flowers; the purpley ones closer to the camera are larkspur.
I did love the flowers though.
Everything was starting to bloom. My palette of red, purple, white and green seemed to be taking hold.
And then to our surprise, I discovered an errant tomato plant. In no time it developed into a bush, with flowers, then tomatoes aplenty.
So, was I satisfied? It looked colourful. The plants seemed hardy.
And then the poppy flowers died and the leaves turned yellowy and shrivelled, as did the larkspurs. The alyssum grew bigger and bigger and went to seed. One of my roses grew, the other didn't. The strappy leaves of the supposedly hardy red-hot pokers were singed and the flower heads burnt after only one hot day. I added a native grass to offset the flowery plants. I popped in some petunias for summer colour. And the univited guest - the tomato bush - loomed bigger and bigger and, to my mind, was an unsightly blot on my design - though I must admit the crop was turning out to be excellent.
And then.... I decided it was all too much work. I pulled all the dead plants out. Overall, I can see it needs structure and design. I bought a heap of bushy, hardy, slow-growing moundy plants like box, escallonia and euonymous and some tough-looking groundcovers. And tried to fit them in where I could. Again, that was my mistake as there is not even a hint of a design left.
This is where it is now, January 2020.
Oh I wish I was back in July when all I had was a blank canvas. I should have done what the designers do in those TV make-over garden shows - bought all the plants at once and positioned them exactly where they are meant to be with sufficient space for growth.
I think this will be a garden that never stops changing, acccording to my whims. But I do love browsing through my books!!!!! Perhaps an Italian-inspired one next?
And a footnote: We have another large space in the back of the property that is full of river stones and is crying out for a make-over.
