A floral display at Aileen’s eight-month-old garden.
Firstly, Aileen’s. She is retired and has established several gardens over the years. Aileen only moved into her latest home in June within a retirement village, having a small front and even smaller rear garden. With a non-existent front garden it gave her a clean canvas to start.
Aileen is a compulsive plant collector and within a few weeks was tackling the bare site. This is not just a jumble of plants. Much thought has gone into her garden with great colour combinations and plants for seasonal effect (all this in between redecorating her new home and establishing a productive, raised veggie garden).
When I saw Ernie’s front garden for the first time it needed a bit of sorting out. But with a bit of encouragement, he has fixed it.
Ernie is an enthusiastic gardener and researches his plants by visiting garden centres and spending time on the internet.
Ernie’s garden now has groups of plants gently spilling over the edge of a gravel path with a paver edge. The curves of the path invite the visitor to follow them, wondering what is around the corner. Once again, Ernie has groups of plants of the same variety with year-round interest.
I bring these two examples to demonstrate that even with a bare block it does not necessarily take years to add value to the home.
I don’t recommend buying a whole heap of plants at the one time, unless you have adequately prepared the soil.
So often, with my consultations, I see heaps of plants in their plastic pots sometimes waiting weeks to be planted and also often with many plants dead from not having been watered.
It’s best to buy only enough plants at any one time to easily get them into the ground in a couple of hours. Buying only, say, two shrubs a week and preparing the soil properly still equates to more than 100 in a year.
Ernie’s front garden with its enticing floral path.
- If you have not already done so, cut helleborus to ground level without delay to encourage winter flowers.
- Spray stone fruit trees for brown rot with either Bordeaux or Kocide including the ground under the tree.
- Leaves on Daphne turning yellow? This is due to magnesium deficiency. A heaped tablespoon of Epsom salts dissolved in a watering can of water will solve the problem.
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