52 Projects Wk 33 - The Garden Pt 1

This weekends project was the start of a huge project we have taken on and aim to finish in two more weekends before my Mum's 80th birthday party.  We are redesigning our backyard and preparing new and old garden beds for planting. 

The last two weeks we have been planning what plants we want and how we are going to do it all.   Most of our plants have been ordered from a site called Garden Express.   A most impressive website.  The plants are cheap because they are really small and the more you buy of each plant, the cheaper it gets.  They should arrive in about 10 days, which gives us another weekend to prepare the soil.

This weekend we:

• created a new garden bed,
  weeded both front and back yards and
• began preparing two of the current garden beds.

We are both exhausted and decided to stop at lunchtime today (Sunday) because we really had nothing left. 

We timed both today and yesterdays stopping of work really well.   We are battling the weather as well, with it being wet and windy.  Yesterday we stopped at about 3 pm.  We had one break for rain, but the rest of the time was just light drizzle or nothing and that was fine to work in.  But after we stopped it came down heavy, the wind picked up to a gale and we were so grateful to have finished.  It was awful!!

Today we finished up, showered, had lunch and then it started bucketing down!  We got really lucky!  With any luck it will rain heavily enough to wash off all clay soil that I traipsed all over the driveway!  Yucky!

I forgot to take before photos, silly me!  But the "work in progress" photos with a description of what was there will be quite enough.

The Back Yard

Photo 1

We created this garden bed in order to plant our photinia robustus hedge.  The lawn was all the way to the fence line, so we had to dig it out and then put in the edging.

 

 

Photo 2

This section here (from the opposite end of the yard) was full of weeds.  And we aren't talking ordinary weeds!  No sir!  We are talking waist high, find a path through them weeds!  The green bin is full already and we haven't put even half of the piles in it.

The great thing though, with both the digging of the garden bed and the weeding is that with so much rain, the soil is really wet and the weeds and grass came out easily.  I don't think we would have been able to do it otherwise.  (more about my soil later!)

 

 

Photo 3

The side bed below, I have never really done anything with.  Planted a couple of fruit trees and then didn't take care of them.  But they are doing okay and with TLC will pick up well.  This bed was also full of weeds but not so bad and all ground level! 

However, this bed was the rubble dumping ground when the house was built and was full of debris.  After doing the weeds, I went through and picked up all the surface rubble, then put gypsum in the soil and watered it in.  You can still the white gypsum on the surface.  The rain we are getting will help to soak it thoroughly into the soil.

Turning over the soil will be next and will be a horrible job (see further down for the front yard job!) and will also bring to the surface more rubble to be cleared.  We also plan to continue the corrugated iron edging along this bed as well instead of the bricks.

 

 

Photo 4

This is the moss rocks and garden bed below them where we are going to plant grasses and natives.  Above the moss rocks will be a lovely place to sit and enjoy the view over the suburbs to the sea!  I am going to put my colourful table and chairs up here.  It will look great.  There are still a few minor weeds to remove here but it's pretty good.  Nothing waist high!!

 

 

The Front Yard

Photo 5

Once again, it was full of weeds.  Then it was putting down the gypsum and watering it in.  And then, the "horrible job".  Most of my soil is clay.  Hard, yucky, sticky, clumpy clay.  The weeds stick hard, the water runs off, the muddy clay is yuck, yuck, yuck. 

So, turning it over was a "beartch".  Not only clay, but also a bit of debris that I kept striking from when we had the new retaining wall put in.  You can see I almost got to the end of the job, before I collapsed in a heap with aching hands, neck and back.  The further along I got the worse the clay got.  At this point, I couldn't do one strike of the hoe before it had collected a large clump of clay.  I will finish this another day!

 

We have a LOT more to do, but have made a good solid start.  I will leave the rest of the story till next week!

This is an exciting job.  One I have wanted to do for many years.  It will look great when it is finished.  Nothing like having a deadline in order to get things done!