One of the things I really enjoy is spending time in the garden. I think it’s a fantastic counterpoint to the amount of time I spend dealing with technology and computer issues. After spending so long in front of a computer it’s great to go outside and get your hands good n dirty.

I have been having increased success with growing vegetables, especially in the area of what to plant and quantities. It’s ok to open up the gardening books and read or to access information online but nothing beats hands on experience of discovering what grows well and what actually gets eaten.

Since I moved into this house in 2005 I have been doing quite a lot out the back garden. I have had a general plan since I first moved in and have more or less kept to it. I’ve still got things I would like to do out the back but we’re now starting to talk about big money so I’ll leave them in the “pipedream” stage for now.

Apart from removing the roses and planting two plum trees, the front has been left untouched but I’ve also had plans for that part of the garden for a long time and now I am moving forward with that.

The first thing I started with was the neighbours front verge, the area that’s between the road and the property boundary line. My next door neighbours on the west side are a corner block house and their house faces onto the side street. As they don’t look out onto that part of their verge it’s in a pretty sorry state.
Originally it had woodchips on to cover and keep the sand in place but over time, due to the action of weeds and vehicles parking there, the woodchips are beginning to sink into the ground.

There are restrictions as to what can be planted there. Generally speaking most people just have grass on their verge but I am really not a fan of grass, something I think is an incredible waste of resources and that takes a lot of effort to keep looking good and maintain. It’s also very invasive so once grass is in, it’s very hard to get out again. Most of my time in the garden is spent removing grass from the garden beds and veggie patch. With the main restriction being a height one, I looked for indigenous plants that were under half a metre tall and placed them out there. Unfortunately one of the plants didn’t survive however the others did and are doing well. As two are ground cover they should spread nicely over the offending messy ground.

Next I removed the concrete borders that separated the front lawn from the garden beds. I did this to extend the garden beds out further from the house. It is my intention to totally remove all lawn from the front garden and only have grass on the verge immediately in front of our house. Following that I removed the hedge that was on the eastern boundary of the property. I have a couple of trees in pots that will be going in there eventually but for now that area is my sand pile.

Sand pile?

That brings me to the next part of my work in progress and that’s the lowering of the verge. I still want to have lawn on the verge but the gentle slope up to the house is going. I started a couple of weeks ago and am now nearly all the way across the garden, dropping the level of the garden by up to 30cm.

My dad, when he came over suggested that I should just get a bobcat in and, for a couple of hundred dollars, could have the whole lot done in a couple of hours, but there are two reasons why I didn’t want to do that. Firstly a couple of hundred dollars would be better spent on front garden stage 2, the second reason is I wanted to do it by hand. It’s a lot of hard work but it’s very satisfying to watch the progress as I cut my way through the ground. Doing it by hand also allows me to take a little more time because I’m not wanting to start on stage 2 until spring.

Winter is also going to allow the verge grass to recover somewhat.