Let's see ... my last posting here at Garden Amateur was News Year's Day this year. So it's way overdue that I keep the old garden blog rolling along, and finally I have some news to report.
Pammy and I are giving our front garden a major makeover — the first one since we redesigned the front garden way back in 2000.
We're both very well, only slowly getting on in years but more importantly getting on in life quite rapidly, too. And we're enjoying our front and back gardens as much as ever.
Our front garden was once a lovely thing, mostly native, but the main planting there had become huge, overgrown and was rapidly dying at the same time. So it was time for a major makeover: pull out everything, replace it with completely new plantings. Totally different look.
Let me show you some BEFORE photos, including the overgrown disaster, then we can settle in to show you our brand new, low maintenance garden makeover.
BEFORE
2009, the front garden in its lovely heyday.
The bluey-green spillover plant is a Cootamundra Wattle
groundcover form. The gray center planting is a native
Correa alba shrub, the little green hedge is native
lilly pilly 'Tiny Trev'. And there's a native yellow
gum (Eucalyptus leucoxylon 'Rosea') street tree
drooping in a branch top left. Many passers-by would
stop to ask what was what. We never imagined it
would grow so abundantly, but it was great while it lasted.
2018, and the Cootamundra wattle had taken over. The Correa alba
was dead, the Tiny Trev hedges were alive but almost invisible,
and my main job was to cut back the wattle to stop it accosting
innocent civilians walking by on the footpath.
2023, it had all got too much for me, so we hired the wonderful
Howie from GetUp Gardening and Landscaping Services, an
inner-west Sydney gardening guy I found online, to come in
and remove everything. Howie did it all single-handedly in a
day and a half, and I chose him because (a) I liked him and (b)
his quote was very competitively priced.
After Howie cleared everything away, our front garden looked twice
as big, and it was time for me to get out of my armchair and do
some proper gardening.
AFTER
Looks kinda bare, doesn't it? That's how it works with garden
makeovers: all the gaps between plants look too far apart, but
I am hoping my research is right, and everything will grow over
the next two years to cover the garden with foliage and color.
Right now, the main attraction is the coloured redwood mulch,
the same mulch we started with back in 2000.
The planting plan is simple. A row of Camellias at the back,
in the shady area right next to the house. There's a single dwarf
gum tree in the middle, and everywhere else will be low, spreading
groundcovers that I am hoping will spread and join up to form
a low-growing, low-maintenance alternative to lawn.
The Camellias are the 'Yuletide' variety, with single
red blooms featuring a big, bold boss of yellow stamens.
They're a low-growing hedging type that should flower
in autumn and early winter. They're in a tough spot
that is shaded entirely by the house in full-on winter
months of June to August, but they also get blasted
by the afternoon sun in summer. There's no guarantee
they will work here, but they're my plan A, and I'll
think up plan B only if I have to.
The tiny-leaved groundcover is Corsican mint, which is planted
close to the camellias in the shadier zone.
Pam had her heart set on an orange-flowered dwarf
gum tree, and it took us a while to find one. They're
a popular plant in Sydney and sell quickly, and so we
waited until new stock arrived at Sydney Wildflower
Nursery in Heathcote, a great source of native plants
in the Sydney region.
It was only when the little gum tree went in, this morning,
that Pammy and I considered the makeover 'finished'.
The label says it could reach 4m x 4m, we are hoping it
goes no bigger than 3m x 3m, so we'll wait and see.
Creeping thyme is the main groundcover planted. There are
three varieties with different flower colours. This is the 'ordinary'
creeping thyme, with pinky-purple flowers, and it's showing a
few blooms already. There's also a crimson form, and another
called 'Bergamot' with more strongly purple flowers.
Speaking of flowers, this is a photo of the dwarf gum in full glory,
downloaded from a retail nursery website. We'll be pleased if
ours looks this spectacular over coming summers.
And you undoubtedly have noticed little spots of green
here and there popping up among the red mulch. Our old
garden was home to several very annoying weeds, and
I am taking on the mighty task of hand-pulling out all
types, except one. Native violets.
We're keeping the native violets partly because they fit into the planting scheme of low-growing groundcovers, but also because it's just impossible to control native violets by hand weeding. As we are heading into a tough El Nino summer here, the hot dry weather will probably prove to be the native violets' nemesis. In the meantime they are growing vigorously, just as these pictured weedy ones on our side concrete path are doing this morning.
And until next time, when I have some other gardening news to report to you, I hope this blog update finds you all well and happy and enjoying your time in the garden.It's hardly a happy time in the world at large right now. It's terrible in so many places, in fact. But that is why my garden is so precious to me. Of all the places in the world I could be in at the moment, I am where I want to be, at home in my garden.Best wishes to you all.Jamie
