Landscaping the garden

Just a couple of weeks (end of December 2014) after we moved into our new home this was our landscape.  The ground was dry by this time and extremely hard to dig into.  Looking very raw.

Out the back the landing strip (septic tank) looks raw as well but the orchard is nice and green. The landing strip is going to be a challenge, thinking of just throwing lots of seeds around and see what happens.

On advise from the builder we have  planted the bank at the front with 3 ornamental plum trees at top and variety of grevilleas (to attract birds and give privacy) and ground cover natives, have to keep them watered through the heat of summer, the theory is that this will hold the bank together in the winter.

Some of the bounty of the orchard, so new at growing our own fruit, lots of trial and error

Two varieties of pear growing

 End of April we began developing the front into a garden.  With the help of Kirsty and Peter we have put in sleeper retaining walls, very challenging with large rocks (ended up sitting the back wall on top of rocks) and large tree roots, if you recall we had large trees removed from the front of the property.

 John finished the retainer walls and if you know my John, he is a perfectionist so took twice as long.
He was the builder, muggins the labourer, wheel barrowing rubble from under the house to put behind the back wall for drainage.  Was very hard work but rewarding.

We got to the challenging part at the end of May, digging for garden bed, was full of rock and tree roots.  About 4 rocks where huge granite about half metre below ground, took a whole day getting this one out, neighbour lent us heavy duty crow bars, filled it with water to soften the ground, lot of clay so took a while for water to dissipate.  It was so heavy we had to use the crow bars to roll it out and to the side.  decided to use some of the big ones in the garden as features.  Enough smaller ones to do dry creek bed down the side of the house to drain away winter water.

 Reckon if we went another metre down it would be one huge granite plate, but we have enough soil to grow roses and perennials in, no lawns, yeeha!!!

Finally got this part done, planted a few annuals for a bit of colour,  John made this cool step down deck, it was a bit of a challenge on what to put there as not really enough room for steps, the little deck is perfect and matches the veranda.
Sorry for the delay in keeping up to date with the blog lots going on.