Front Garden

Three months after moving into the house all we had was our terrible looking DIY brick letter box and no driveway.. With the rain we had countless days where we got stuck in the wet sand trying to get into the house. Beginning of April we got a letter from the Estate saying that we have to do the front garden so the setting up of the front garden became a pressing matter.. We decided to have a go at it during Easter holidays.. It's our first house.. setting up the front garden was a bit of work for is.. especially when we didn't know what we were doing.. I spent countless hours browsing the Internet trying to find ideas.. drew many sketches but it was really difficult when I didn't even know what sort of plants I needed..

The plan was to get the drive way put in a week before Easter so that we can work on the garden during Easter. Things didn't quite work out as planned (they never do.. especially for me). We were getting a lot of rain so the driveway got delayed until Easter.. We went for a aggregate concrete driveway which actually turned out to be quite nice. It cost us $4250 but have to say love the look of it. Not having a driveway for three months and suddenly having one was heavenly :)

With the driveway work still being done we decided to work on the garden anyway before our holidays run out.. When we bought the land we thought it's quite flat but the final product was the front of the land was levels with the road and the side of the house is quite higher than the road level. It was quite annoying because on top of setting up the front garden we had to come up with a way to retain the soil.

We wanted a easy to maintain drought tolerant front garden. I did not want all the plants to die whenever I forget to water the plants. Also with both of us working full time and trying to have a social life on the weekends, I knew we won't be spending time on weeding. So we decided to weed mat the whole garden and cover it with mulch and pebbles with minimal drought tolerant plants. As much as I love grass, I don't trust my other half moving the lawn regularly. I will have as much as grass I want in the back yard. That's my plan ;)

We got 6 m3 of black mulch delivered and 1 1/2m3 flat river pebbles delivered. And it turns out 6m3 of mulch is way to much! We went with the amounts suggested by the shop person in the garden shop. Should have ordered less. Lesson for the next time.

After spending hours and hours in Diacos plant nursery we bought 2 Yaccas, 4 choc mint, 2 birds of paradise, and a few more plants which I can't remember the names now. Apparently birds of paradise is more of a tropical look and does not go with the drought tolerant look we are going for. The guy at the shop was insisted I shouldn't buy birds of paradise but I did anyway :) It's my garden! I can have anything I want :) I see his point. but I was too obsessed with Birds of Paradise plant! :)

We were clueless how to retain the soil in the garden. We could have built a retaining wall but we didn't trust our DIY skills to do it. I bought some blue stones off ebay thinking that would do. But it turns out it is only enough to do the side of the house. We looked around on the Internet for more blue stones and there was no way we can find more before end of Easter holidays.

We were desperate so we ordered 1m3 of honey comb rocks from Diacos which cost  me $85.. which was okay I guess.. But when they got delivered we got a shock! They were huge! It was a lot of hard work. Me and my husband rolling the rocks all by ourselves. It was not fun but we managed to get through it. It was quite an achievement!!!

By end of Easter we were about 90% done. We were both exhausted. Every bone and muscle in our body was hurting but we managed to do most of the garden. We were almost there!!!! I was extremely happy with what we managed to put together.

Our very first front garden created by just the two of us!!!!

(now we just need some rain to wash off my muddy pebbles..)