grammyinthegarden: June - Finishing off the front garden

Hibernating did I say? Inside projects??? I must have been tired....those things will happen but they will have to wait till the front garden is finished.

Pop is now back to normal but still needs to take things easy. So he helped as much as was possible.

1^st June – I cleaned out my garden shed and re-organised it – the main reason this was necessary was to sweep up all of my last year’s sweet pea seeds. I stored the seed pods there nicely protected from the wet weather but didn’t take into account that I would be off to hospital and so of course in the heat of January the pods ripened and sweet peas hid themselves in many locations all around the shed. So now they are recovered and the shed is in order.

I also planted another six grevilleas in the front area near the letterbox.

2^nd June – YAY the sweet peas are planted. Now hopefully they will appear in a week or so.

3^rd June - I decided to have a go at moving the block retaining wall from in front of the side fence and re-positioning it to join around to the new section of the driveway. I was quite pleased with the result and got to work preparing the soil for some plants. I chose 2 camellias ‘C M Wilson’ and ‘Elgans Splendour’. These should go really well with the established camellia. I don’t know its name but I am pleased it will finally have some nice soil to wiggle its roots in . Some more azaleas, and a lophomyrtus Rainbows End (yes another one) and another lophomyrtus ‘Black Stallion’.

6^th June - Pop and I got some packing base and topping stones delivered to do the paths. We put down wet newspaper, then the base and then the stones. We also had some ‘veggie mix’ delivered . I used this to fill up my new garden bed.

7^th June - Eight meters of mulch were delivered and Pop and I set about spreading it. Wet paper down first then the bark on top. I placed some pea straw around some of the plants to help them along. The soil is a mix of heavy sticky clay, white beach sand and every here and there some really nice soil.

8^th June - Our son arrived bright and early and together the three of us got heaps (literally heaps) done. We all had commitments for the afternoon and so had to call it quits for the day at lunch time.

9^th June – More paper laying and mulch moving. Our son arrived after lunch and by 2.30 we had spread the whole lot – there was still a few areas not covered but it would have to wait till some more mulch could be delivered on Tuesday.

10^th June – the last untamed area was between the driveway and the retaining wall. I dug over this area and got it ready for planting. I went off to the nursery and chose ten azaleas. I also got some more topping stones and spruced up the stones at the end of this section.

11^th June – I had ordered three meters but the driver recognised the address and so gave us extra mulch – about 2 meters extra!!! Oh well I wasn’t planning on mulching the backyard just now but that is what I’ll be doing. Our son arrived after work and in about an hour we had the last areas completed. He also moved a large sandstone rock that had just been sitting up in the garden with no purpose in life and so I asked him to move it to the end of the new garden bed to stop the stones and the mulch mixing. It was the perfect size and is finally useful.

12^th June – The existing garden bed of camellias and azaleas was the last to been covered with mulch, and so this morning I dashed out between showers and mulched away. I didn’t bother to wet down the paper as the soil was so wet from our heavy showers overnight that the paper was soon sopping wet.