Progress of summer

A year ago, we started the succulent project. This was to cover an area in the back of the house which got little or no sun. The soil is very poor, with only a shallow layer of good soil above clay. Succulents have shallow roots and grow without a fuss, hence they won the lottery to be planted here!

This Christmas we decided to complete the project. Within a year the succulents had multiplied and we got many more plants for free! We started off first by removing all from the bed and dividing them in individual plants. Then we worked in a sort of a pattern to use all the ones we had.

Multiple Semperviums

Succulents in a row

As with all good garden beds, we topped this arrangement off with a natural coloured mulch. The effect was quite pleasing.

View 1

View 2

The aforementioned cacti found a spot at the end of this bed. This is the route that our dogs love to use to wander into the beds. Hopefully no more!

Cacti

We were able to harvest a cucumber this year. It took a long time for one of the zillion flowers to become something edible! I also harvested loads of mint. I am thinking about controlling it's growth though, need to be ruthless and leave only one or two stems to continue the crop.

Cucumber

Mint

And finally, here is a picture of the Russell Lupin that we bought at Christmas! In the time we have had it, I have discovered it's seed pods (after flowering) are very harmful to dogs. So the time has come to relocate it the front of the house where none of them can get to it.

Lupin

A green shopping list

So, there we were, standing in the garden section of Bunnings and wondering what to do because the plants on our list were unavailable! That was our first lesson.

Lesson 1: Have a plan B when the local nursery doesn't stock the plant you want.

Lilly Pilly

Anyway, there were enough knowledgeable people around who could help us pick out something else. We came home with a native tree called Lilly Pilly. It was to be our screening plant (or neighbours-be-gone as called in Australia!). It was already 3 feet tall and expected to grow by a foot every year.We ended up buying a native plant specific fertilizer and a Lilly Pilly disease resistant tablet and also learnt our second lesson in the process.

Lesson 2: The nursery will sell you all sorts of paraphernalia that you don't need.

The Lilly Pilly was so big that it took us novices the better part of the evening to plant it. It took us a couple of hours to get it out of the pot itself! We were trying to beat the sunset but could not finish the mammoth task before it became dark. After struggling to plant such a big (and extremely expensive) tree, we decided to never buy a mature plant.

Lesson 3: Better to grow a plant from seed or a cutting, than to waste money on a mature plant.

Having learnt some new lessons in life, our second purchase was much more practical. We bought young plants of African Daisy, Myoporum and a different kind of Lilly Pilly. These were intended to flank the Lilly Pilly tree. The Myoporum is an Australian native ground cover, we wanted to use it as a garden bed edging. The African daisy was going to give some cheer all year round with random flowering. We were very pleased with the final result.

Our loot!

African Daisy

Before mulch

There was one last thing to do which is a typical garden addition in Australia - mulch. Mulch is widely used in the garden beds and serves a dual purpose of preventing evaporation and preventing weeds from growing. It gave a very nice finish to the garden bed.

After mulch