Garden

Now this is a section of the blog where you will be able to see (once I've completed all of the updates) the most amount of improvement and {growth} (literally!)


My garden has been fashioned out of a paddock. This is the view from our lovely paddock garden.

Not bad eh? God did good.


So, we've established that the view was great, and we obviously have an elevated perspective.


Starting a garden from a paddock means literally just that - you really have to s.t.a.r.t. And starting often means starting small.
As our home had a beautiful south facing verandah (in the Southern Hemisphere, south facing usually means that the house is facing the cold winds - such is the case here, but it was a toss up between warmth and view - we chose view).


This pic is a great one - imagine all of those trees G.O.N.E. (Yes, to any greenie's out there, you'll be apalled - but we chopped every single one down. And that is now where our house stands.

I told you! We plonked our house down in the middle of a paddock.

This next picture shows us {s.h.i.f.t.i.n.g....h.o.u.s.e} LITERALLY.


And there she is - in position. Doesn't look like our house is in the middle of a paddock here...a mud pit, yes!











I decided that I wanted to compliment the rather symmetrical look of the house with a formal camellia hedge that would eventually provide a mock balustrade (if you get my meaning) that would grow to about knee height when one stands on the verandah (easier to show than talk about...when we come to some 2012 pics of the garden, you'll get my drift).

Here is {Beatrice Emily} as a baby plant, a very pretty sasanqua camellia (which loves south facing, southern hemisphere paddock gardens!)

Umm.hmmm...yes, it's hard to picture what she'll look like planted - and even more terrifying, whether it will look any good in five years time! Well, now that we're in 2012, I can claim that I made the right choice.


This is the front yard after the house was shifted onto the property, and some basic excavation and levelling work had been completed.

Believe it or not, the camellias are actually planted in front of the verandah at this point. But yes...they are teeny tiny! And below, this is a year down the track, when they are having a first flourish of flowering.

And a year down the track, in first flower. {l.o.v.e.}

While I was embarking on the front of the property, I was also establishing other bits and pieces. To look at the photos now makes me laugh! This is the first large-scale landscaping project that I've ever been involved in, and it's a tricky ask to be able to visualise plants once they have grown to full size.

Anyway, allow me to set the scene around the back of the house (the north facing, sunny side. Paddock, with house on it.  

This is a pic of the stone burier (naturally, stones get buried well beneath the surface), but the tractor simultaneously seeds the newly cultivated soil with lawn seed! {marvellous}

Lawn sprayed off, and shaping (done by hand), had commenced. I wanted curves. I achieved that. Jase wanted to dig over the entire area ready for plants, and then plant it all up.

I didn't.

I won.

And from another perspective.

The original planting scheme. After living for so long with soil and grass only, I was dying to have some colour in the garden. 

Looking back on this, I can confirm that there are about three of the original plants remaining! Everything else, whilst lovely at the time, just wasn't going to work, and it was all too slow.

I can't resist giving you the {after} shots now...