Sunday 20 October 2013

Spring in our Garden

What space do we have in our garden?

Our house - shiny and new two years ago
We bought a 'battle axe' block - think long driveway with our house built in what was once our neighbours back yard. So we have 28 metres of driveway (with garden beds on both sides) , a small decorative garden bed at the front, a small courtyard and long narrow side and rear gardens. One of the  nice things about our garden is there's no lawn to maintain (there's a huge park across the street).


Since we bought our house a little over two years ago the biggest changes have occurred in the garden. Our priorities were edibles, or native.

What did we do?

Our courtyard (Oct 2013)
Firstly we brought in a lot of organic matter, and dug out a lot of clay! We built up the garden beds along the driveway. One side for fruit trees, the other for vegetables. Closer to the house we raised the main bed in front of the house and created a herb garden. In the courtyard we removed stones and box hedges and replaced theses with lavender, rosemary and 'snow in summer'. We also planted Wisteria. We also planted a lot of climbers, which are trained onto wires in front of the garage. 

So just how many fruit trees can you fit on a 500m2 block?

Quite a few! We've got six apple trees, three pear trees and a lemon and a lime. In addition we've got passionfruit, a grape vine, a tayberry (a cross between a black berry and a raspberry), kiwiberries, rhubarb, three types of raspberry and lots of strawberries.
Apple and pear blossom, apple tree, strawberries, rhubarb and passionfruit flowers

What are we growing for spring and summer in the veggie patch?

While we still have lots of greens (think lettuce and spinach) right now we are gearing up for spring and summer so we have lots of seeds and seedlings on the go (pumpkin, beetroot, leek, beans, lettuce, rocket, watermelon, tomato, cucumber, zucchini... to name a few). More photos to follow.

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