Garden Renewal

 We have a pretty big garden here, I always say its two acres but I'm just guessing really! Nevertheless it is pretty big. Many times we have said we  wouldn't plant anything else but that doesn't happen at all. We have five large rose beds and many less formal areas as well as a big vegetable patch and a lot of fruit trees. It has been a labor of love and guided by  whim and opportunism rather than knowledge or science a lot of the time. Often it feels like a monster and in over the fifteen years we have been gardening here we have had two major droughts and  many life events that have impacted on its development and care.

Last year when I finished work, our daughters gave me a consultation with a landscape gardener, this was extremely useful and gave us a path forward for the future. However our year was significantly impacted by covid as we had two of our grandchildren here for most of the winter and I was homeschooling as well as running a household with two young children in it. We did garden but haphazardly. Then I was locked out of NSW for two months and was away for most of the spring! However we have had a very mild summer, we have had some nice rain and despite all the setbacks the garden is looking pretty good. I am on a mission to systematically get every part of the garden in order. Over the past few days all the rose gardens have been weeded and had a light prune. Having achieved this I now plan to go around the garden from  one side to the other and get everything into some sort of order. I don't know how long it will take but I am hoping not more than a month. 

As well as the rose gardens I have now started on the terraced gardens at the back of the house. The plan for these beds is that they contain attractive, edible plants, herbs, edible flowers, rhubarb etc. I have replanted a lot into this space post the drought as even the mint had died. Below are some photos of where they are up to today. The rhubarb, lemon verbena and marjoram have done particularly well. I have ordered some more colorful herbs to fill in the gaps and started mulching. 








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