This is a non-knitting post for the benefit of friends who might want to see the landscaping work we’ve had done around our house recently. It’s also unavoidably picture-heavy, so apologies to those with dial-up.

First, our new front yard:

The bottlebrush tree and a bit of the retaining wall beneath it is about all that’s left of the original too-weedy-to-be-called lawn. Now there are mudstone edges and ‘artistically’ placed rocks, with native ground covers. I’m thinking of putting in some clumps of native grasses, once the ground covers start to spread and I get an idea of how they’re going to look. The lilydale topping drive now extends into a path to the side gate.

And there’s the ‘driveway bed’:

Trust me, there are plants in there. Ten native plants. The green thing on the left is a rose bush. New beds and plants are always a bit underwhelming to photograph.

Down the back we planted four bottlebrush trees that will eventually screen the fence and the neighbours’ back yards:

The grass weeds will have to be poisoned regularly between now and October, when there’ll be a chance that any grass we put down survive without watering (due to restrictions). And we want to get rid of the invasive species, which you can see invading the ‘citrus’ bed despite our efforts so far.

This is the ‘tree’ bed:

Which has become the place where plants I’ve removed from elsewhere get transferred to. If they survive, they survive. If they don’t, well at least we gave them a chance. The japanese maple isn’t looking too well, but the strappy green things are pretty robust. There are white lilies – unfairly maligned because of the association with funerals and death – in there that. There are also heaps of little bulbs passed on by a friend, which should be a nice surprise come spring.

This is the beginning of my potted succulent garden:

They’ll go on either side of a park bench, once I replace the rotting slats.

This is my new ‘servicable’ area, with my new gardening shed and our water tank:

This is the ‘herb and vege’ bed:

So far the only things I’ve planted are tarragon, thyme, oregano and a compost bin. Such a relief to have a compost bin again. Only problem is, the kitchen door is in the existing cat run, and the end of the run will be blocked until the run is finished. I have to walk all the way around the house to reach the bin. As you can see, the beau is in the middle of extending the run. We got the old wire door from a metal salvage yard. We used chicken wire on the first part of the run, which resulted in many cuts and scrapes and much swearing. The new part will be covered in plastic mesh we got from National Netmakers.

This is the cat run as it exists now:

The blue line shows where it ends now. The yellow line shows where it will extend to. The red line is where I’m thinking of putting a screening wall of some sort, with an archway cut into it, to block the view of the ‘servicable’ area and hot water service from the front of the house.

And finally, here’s a pile of rubble:

Why am I showing you this? Well, the main part – probably 80% of the pile – is leftover mudstone we want to sell. We ordered three cubic metres and ended up with five or six. About one and a half cubic metres of it is too small for our purposes, which may be why the supplier added extra to the load, but the remaining one and a half to two metres is a good size for garden edging. Apparently mudstone is all the rage at the moment. We like it because it matches well with both the colour of the volcanic rocks we already had, and the red brick of the house.

Leave a comment if you’re interested in buying it. We can’t deliver, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to pick it up. I’m giving friends a chance to buy it before I advertise it in the trading post in a week or so.

Hope you enjoyed my landscaping tour! It certainly is satisfying to have something nice again, after having everything covered in building rubble for a year and a half.