Articles
Designed to help you choose elements for your garden and look after your garden as it grows
This space will be updated regularly to align with questions, comments and inquiries from clients.
Be sure to check this space regularly for updates.
Testing the soil
Before choosing what to build within your garden, we must understand what is there first. This will start by visiting the site, if it is accessible, and testing the soil's properties. We'll get to know if its clay, sand or loam and also test its pH. This will let us know what soil additives you will need, if you may need some raised garden beds and what plants will thrive.
Checking the aspect
We'll check the path of the sun, and gauge the amount of sunlight your outdoor space/s will receive and identify any micro-climates that may exist. This, too will inform how you use the space and plants that will thrive within it.
Double digging
A good way to add air or soil improvements to a new garden bed or veggie patch.
Hedges
When designing gardens for our front yard, we had a few things to consider. Firstly, the landscaping guidelines from Redbank, the estate in which we were building. Secondly, privacy from the road and neighbours. Thirdly, our choice of plants and materials (some suggestions and guidelines were given to us by the estate). Fourthly, the amount of care and maintenance the gardens would need. Finally, the overall look and feel of the front outdoor space.
We decided on different hedges for different areas. The front yard was to be rather formal from the road, yet have a more playful feel from the house, including various textures yet flowing a muted colour pallet. We wanted a contemporary version of a “White” garden.
Most of the front and side boundary of the front has been planted with Murray paniculata (Orange Jessamine). This is a great hedging plant best kept between 1-2m in height, with dark green leaves and flushes of white, citrus smelling flowers produced throughout the year after rain. Our plants are 5-6 years old, and have been in the ground for about 3.5 years, I am still waiting for two of them to reach 1m tall. It grows fairly quickly, so if you want a neat hedge, you’ll have to trim it regularly (I give it a quick 30min trim every couple of weeks before mowing the lawn, I put a drop sheet down to help reduce the mess). If you wish to have neat Murraya paniculata hedges, you will need a motorised hedge trimmer, it would be too hard to trim with the old-fashioned hedge trimmers. While it is not a native to Australia, it grows well, has a lovely perfume, few pests (the odd aphid and citrus leaf miner) and diseases and the bees love it!
I give the front garden little care when it comes to the soil. We spent time and money on improving the heavy, white clay soil when first digging the garden bed, bags of gypsum, garden soil, compost, slow-release fertilisers and various soluble soil conditioners were added over the first year or so. Now it gets watered by hand about once weekly, and given slow-release fertiliser a few times a year if the leaves start to yellow on the Murraya and at the end of winter. Soil conditioners are added to support spring flowers.
An idea I borrowed from my eldest sister-in-law was to collect tube stock for the gardens while waiting for our new house to be built. It was great to have established plants that I’d cared for and had cost me next to nothing right when I moved in. It also gave me something positive to do while waiting for two years for land to be registered and a house to be built.
Other hedges include Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Silver Sheen’, Lavender “Avonview” and Lillypilly Syzygium Australe ‘Resilience’.
The Pittosporum is a very fast grower, I trim this most months to keep its shape. It gives us great privacy next to the driveway and the silver-coloured leaves provide a wonderful contrast with the dark green Murraya paniculata.
The “Avonview” lavender (Lavandula stoechas ‘Avonview’) is my favourite type of lavender. I trialled a few different plants under the large Watergum street tree, no others survived. Even the pigface was suffering with the soil conditions and the afternoon sun under the watergum. The “Avonview” lavender fits broadly with the colour scheme of the front gardens and can live with the conditions, flowering recently through spring summer and now into autumn.
Lillypilly Syzygium Australe ‘Resilience’ is planted in a hedge 1m away from the front bedroom window. It has been pleached – that is the branches have been intertwined and branches at the base of the plants have been removed. It looks like a hedge on stilts. This allows light into the garden bed below, while still providing privacy for the window from the street.
Hedges are a great way to define an outdoor space and give privacy without erecting a fence. While the examples here are well trimmed and quite formal, there will be many future examples that will show a more relaxed, natural feel that would suit a different style of garden.
Rockery Garden
These photos was taken recently at Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens of their rockery gardens. I’m so happy this style of garden is making a comeback into suburbia. Rockery gardens are low maintenance, filled with bold displays of flower colour and leaf texture, filled with natural stone as points of interest and the wildlife love them!
