On the garden front

Lets get this straight right from the beginning....

 I DON'T garden.

It's not that I don't like garden's but more the fact that I've never been interested in growing one myself.  

The few times I've decided that our garden looks bloody terrible and have a go at doing something about it a toad usually jumps out at me and then it's takes me a few years to have another go.  (Having a toad phobia is not good when you live in Queensland!)

Lately though I've been having a bit of a change of heart.  I'm a little tired of our garden looking so terrible and get a bit depressed about it when I drive in the yard.  I realised that hubby wasn't going to do much about it unless I gave him a little push and that push would require me to be out there in the thick of things.

We don't have a big yard and there are existing garden beds which only needed cleaning up and putting some plants in.  

I decided to begin in the front yard which gets the full brunt of our Queensland sun as it faces west.  That means I only garden in the morning while the house provides some shade and I need really good, hardy plants that not only need very little TLC but can tolerate the full sun and heat.

We also need plants that will grow up and hide the fencing we've had to put up since we got the dogs, especially May since she escapes any chance she can get.

My lovely Mum has come over to help me clean up the garden a bit.  She LOVES scratching around in the garden so it seems that's one gene I didn't inherit.

As for the planning of what I wanted to do I enlisted the help of my Mum, sister and our lovely neighbour whose garden puts me to shame.  Planning is something I can do!

The above garden looked terrible and most of the shrubs and trees really had to go.  They had pretty big root systems and the water mains goes straight past where they're planted so we decided to pull everything out.  The gerberas that were in there could stay as I decided they grow and flower with absolutey NO looking after at all.  They're great plants for me.

Hubby was home for a few days and I'd already cleaned up a few areas and had drip fed him on his daily phone calls about what I was doing.  He was prepared to do a bit of gardening work when he was home this time.

My sister and I headed to a lovely nursery and bought some Azaleas for the garden in front of the house.

While we were there my Mum turned up at my house to help and between her, my hubby and the kids, the rest of the gardens had a cleanup.  Hubby hooked the shrubs with the deep roots up to the ute with a chain and pulled them out so that job got done pretty quick.

We've broken up the hippeastrums that were found throughout the previous mess of a garden and planted them in various areas.  We've planted the azaleas and some succulents to help complement the geraniums already thriving.

The front garden that was an overgrown mess now just looks like a dirty mess.  We've replanted the gerberas and some hippeastrums and next time I head to the nursery I'll buys some pots of colour and I think we'll keep this as a flower garden since the water mains go right through it.

It needs some cleaning up and a bit more work but it will look great once it's established.

Hubby goes back to work in a few day and then I'll get into another few sections.  He can't stop me from doing them if  I do them when he's not here!

Anyway, my Mum and sister are both very happy to help me do what I want when he's not here so he'll have 3 of us to contend with when he gets home!

xx Susan