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| One of the reasons why this latest webpage
has been so late in coming, is because I've been spending a lot of time
in the garden on our latest garden project.
This ambitious job has involved changing two large and steep weed-infested
clay banks (around the top of our boardwalk, and play deck) into
beautiful gardens! We had the garden plan prepared by our garden
designer, but it has proved to be a difficult job to execute!
Stage 1 was fixing the "garden" between the boardwalk and our
side fence. This area was originally covered with nuisance foliage that
kept overgrowing. Since this was cleared away we've had an ongoing battle with the
continually re-growing weeds, spraying them and then digging up the
re-growth on a deceptively steep slope (! not easy!). Once I'd had
another good go at removing the weeds and removing the remaining wiry
plants that had survived I then treated the clay with gypsum and compost.
I then had to dig large well drained holes for over 80 plants that I'd arranged
in position over the bank (according to the garden designer's plan).
Before planting the larger ones I had to lay down and fix the mandatory weed matting
across the entire bank, then finally plant everything. Lastly I set up
the automatic watering system and fixed it all in position. I had also cut
in two long ledges along the
slope of the topsoil to lay some rows of large rocks along (to help
break up the slope), and Brent helped me lay them all in position. |
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 Brent at work clearing the bank of original rubbishy foliage |
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It took almost 2 months from start to where we are now, as I could only manage to work on it an hour or so each day (when girls were asleep) as weather permitted and occasionally for longer stints in the weekends. Finally though, this garden is now basically finished and looks great but will take a couple of years to reach the required look (i.e. with no weed matting showing!). This is because the slope of this bank has precluded us from covering the weed matting with any bark/pebbles etc. Istead, we've had to plant a lot of fast-growing groundcovers which are already starting to grow and will in about 2 years time cover most of the matting. The last job, still to be done here, is to tidy up the surrounding fences and walls, then cover them with brush sticks, and hang some garden art on them. Can't wait for the final result, but you can see above how it all looks so far! A much more pleasant sight! Stage 2 (between the boardwalk and play deck, can be glimpsed on the far right hand side of above photos) is now well underway. It's a very detailed and tricky job which we expect to take a good month or two to complete. It involves building retaining walls almost up to the edges of the play deck (to again contain and reduce the steep slope). This has required Brent's expert construction skills and hard work, but I've been helping out as wherever I can. Once the wall is finally completed and the soil smoothed out we're planning to add a water feature waterfall and plant up the remaining area around it, adding rocks, etc. No pics to share yet as its early days - you'll will have to wait to my next update! |
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