Christmas shopping

The Christmas holidays are the best time for us to enjoy our garden. We have two weeks off and we spend as much time outdoors as possible. I have spent many a hour reading under the umbrella with the bees and the butterflies. It is the best feeling.

This holiday I want to finish off the succulent setup, at least that is the plan! But before that we wanted to make a trip to Masters and check out what they have that we could plant. We came back with more than we had planned for :)

We picked up these really tiny trio of Cacti. They are growing in moss possibly, but I did not want to prick myself to confirm that! These are ideal for sealing off one of the routes into our garden beds that the doggies like to use.

Trio of Cacti

Masters had beautiful Dahlia plants. I have never grown them before, but they looked too good to resist. We bought them in two colours. They have a beautiful shape.

Dahlia "Gallery Pinto"

Dahlia "Gallery Valentin"

A couple of Decembers ago, we went to New Zealand for a holiday. The country is beautiful, with a picture postcard scene at every bend of the road. In south island, on our way to Milford Sound, we came across a field of wild flowers by the stream. They looked beautiful even on the rainy day we saw them. When I saw the very same flower in Masters, I jumped at the chance to own them. They are called Lupins, we bought the Russell hybrid.

Lupins in New Zealand

Russell Lupin

Finally, we bought an indoor plant to replace the one we lost. From Betters Homes and Gardens, we learned that Bromeliads do not mind indoors. We bought one to place next to the front door, next to a window which gets evening sunlight.

Bromeliad

Garden retreat

The disadvantage of our plot location is that we are lower than our neighbours, which makes our garden very visible. There are naturally several trees that grow fast enough to be used for screening, but they are very common. We wanted to have variety as well as functionality. At the start of the new season, we had grand plans for spending more time outdoors in our garden.

By now Morrison nursery and BAAG had become our favorite haunts for uncommon plants. An episode of Better Homes and Gardens introduced us to a plant called Tibouchina, which is an evergreen shrub with beautiful flowers all year round. We got two of those to brighten up our garden.

Tibouchina

Our next purchase was a more functional one. We wanted a fast growing tree to block out the view from our neighbour's newly built deck! The best option was an Australian native called Hakea Salicifolia. It is an evergreen tree and really bushy.

Hakea Salicifolia

And finally, Anshuman wanted a maple because of it's beautiful leaves and bark. Maples are deciduous, so we had to pick a location where the view to our garden was not so direct. But the tree was just beautiful and worth it!

Maple

I did say finally, but on the way to the cashier our eye was caught by another tree called Crepe Myrtle. These are also deciduous but have beautiful paper-y flowers for a short time in spring. We picked up one from the Indian summer collection.

Crepe Myrtle

Cementing our place in the gardening world

As we are told several times on "Better Homes and Gardens", when you want to makeover an area, you should always start by removing everything. A quick phone call to our landlord, and all was agreed upon. The old bushes and the lawn had to go. It was also decided that the patch behind the house should be cemented over. The only thing that stayed was the structure of the raised garden beds. A team was hired to execute this operation. The doggies were a bit disappointed at having been locked up inside the house for three days, but in the end we had a clean slate outside.

Work in progress

Work in progress

Work in progress

We needed a new lawn, which was arriving on the weekend. Our first ever gardening task was to level the soil where the turf would be laid. It rained all week and I am ashamed to say that I let the weather get the better of me, so Anshuman did all the levelling.

The turf arrived on the Saturday. It was a new experience for us, we had never seen a lawn being formed before. First, the rectangles of turf had to be laid out to cover the soil. Then, ideally a roller should be rolled across to level it and remove air pockets. We did not have one, so we just walked over it. Finally, we watered it every day for the roots to set. After two weeks of hard work (mainly by someone else!), we had a brand new garden to work with. The time for planning had started!

Laying of turf

We planned our garden several times - both on paper and virtually. There are various free online tools, but we used Garden Planner to start with. It was a pretty cool tool, they have tonnes of options to add to the layout like trees, shrubs, flowers, lawns, building, vegetables etc. It had a grid and each addition could be adjusted to the actual size. It gave us a very decent idea of what we could fit in our garden.

Next we made a paper layout, which allowed us to edit more. We had grand ambitions of a veggie patch, a garden full of flowers and trees to block out the neighbours spying on us. But, as Hercule Poirot says, we had to approach this with 'order and method'! First, we had to decide what we wanted as permanent features in the garden, as both vegetables and flowers have short lives. It was fun researching on the internet for plants that suited that requirement.

Garden layout draft

After much research, we settled on plants native to our location to start the project with. There were so many options to choose from for trees, shrubs and even flowers. All had the advantage of being local and hence, were suited to the unpredictable Melbourne weather. Our first ever plant shopping list was taking shape!