Side-Garden Plan

M. thinks this looks a little South Park-esque, but it seems silly to do anything more elaborate (and time-consuming)! The first photo is a view up the side of the house that was taken when I was working on the fence. It has been elegantly modified to show where the path will join an extended deck.

We will terrace as necessary to support a path (on the left of the grey post) and excavate on the right to remove the one-to-two feet of earth that has built up against our side of the fence. Once we have taken the pressure off the fence we should be able to straighten it up. M. will then plant a fern-garden along and below the path and deck, including some tall tree-ferns.

We cut down the five-metre Cherry Laurel on Friday (the tree with the "X" through it in the top photo). After two trips to the tip this is what is left to get rid of. Since Bunnings is next to the tip we came home with my birthday present after the first trip (a crow-bar) and five redgum sleepers after the second trip. One more trip tomorrow should see most of this mess cleaned up, and another five redgum sleepers—which is enough to get me started on my herb-garden.

Fence-Posts and the Fence Line

This is another before-and-after post. The above photo was taken in November, the one below just now.

The fence has not been completely freed of weeds: the ivy has been cleared, but the Wandering Jew is now creeping through the fence, and the ivy has to be completely uprooted from the earth on our side of the fence-line, but you can see that we have made some progress. And a few of the new plantings are visible in the fore-ground acacia leprosa (Kinglake variety).

Also, note the 100 red gum fence-posts which we had delivered at the bottom of the drive on Friday. We felt like we were contestants in The Biggest Loser, moving that 2-ton pile of wood! The sound timber will become the supports for our vegie boxes, herb-gardens and retaining walls; the unsound wood will keep us warm this winter. And at $2 a stick it was definitely worth the workout.

Another Clue: 70s Floral Fabric

Our 70s shoebox was sold in 2008 and again in 2010. It seems that each time the house was "renovated" before going on the market by removing (or painting over) the original 70s features. Enough remains for us to love the place as it is, and we can restore some of the obscured features. But we take great pleasure in finding clues to other features that have been removed completely. Last week I mentioned some orange tiles we found in the garden. Here is another garden find. Two in fact.

The first square of yellow, floral fabric turned up in the back garden in August. I washed it and photographed it, and then threw it away. The second turned up in the side garden last week.

Judging by the width the two pieces of fabric must have belonged to a pillow-case: a clue to the original colour-scheme in the bedrooms?

Magpie Visits Our Shrine

We don't actually know what to call the wall cavity facing the back door, the one that springs water-leaks whenever it rains, but M. has been transforming this space with ferns. Amid the ferns is a Japanese lantern that M. bought about four years ago, which I have always thought should be in a shrine of some sort. (Perhaps this is because it sat among the ferns around the pond in our last place.) Since it now sits in a shrine-like cavity …

Anyway, the magpies have been getting accustomed to us, and Ted, and scavenging from Ted's bowl whenever he leaves anything behind, or from the bones he leaves in the garden. And, apparently, the Japanese lantern is the perfect spot to check out the food bowl.

Original 70s Orange Tiles

M. found this is the front garden about a month ago. I found another two fragments in the side garden yesterday, where all sorts of rubbish is buried (more on which, anon). Will we find a complete tile?

I photographed the tile against the brickwork in the kitchen, which is where it probably came from. M. wants to replace the grey tiles behind the sink with some like this. Since that the kitchen has been made-over I am not sure we could use them in the kitchen without changing all the other tiles and some of the fittings too, but I adore the colour and want to find somewhere for them. Bathroom perhaps?

Of course, finding whole old tiles like this, or new tiles like this, is bound to be a challenge in itself, regardless of where we use them.

Back Garden Plan No.2

[Old Plan]

The four main changes are that I have [1] substituted one large pentagonal bed and a small deck for the two rectangular herb beds under the gum tree, [2] widened the path, [3] split the monster glass/hot-house in two (now, half hot-house, half chook-house), and [4] added a lower path/deck.

[New Plan]

The minor changes include moving the garden seat closer to the gum (so that it is opposite the deck and, therefore, has a clear view over the house), moving some of the privacy screens and fruit trees. Missing from the plan is the water-tank in the first plan, but I will re-instate it once I have done some more measuring.

A few of these changes were forced on us. If we build anything with a floor-area of more than 10m sq we need planning approval; to get planning approval we need a geophysical survey because we are in a mild land-slip area. Expensive and time-consuming. Two separate structures of 10m sq are fine, one which is 20m sq is not: so the 20m sq glass house has become one glass house and one chook house.

[The Plan]

We wanted chooks and originally, but vaguely, planned on putting them in the top-left (above the X) once the fruit trees were established. Having seen J. and M.'s majestic Summer Palace, and having been inspired by this chook-house on J's blog, we decided to incorporate the chook-house into the plan. Also, since it turns out our neighbours are deaf and stupid (but not, alas, dumb) we thought that the closer we placed the chook-house to their bedrooms, the better.

[Chook House]

As you can see (I have marked north on the New plan), the night-quarters for the chooks will face the morning sun and be accessible from the path behind/outside for early-morning egg-raids. And, because of the sharp fall in the land, will be well clear of the ground, without requiring a steep ramp. Something like this …

[TEXT]

except with an asymmetrical roof, and the coop lower … you get the general idea!

[Planning]

Some of the other changes were inspired by plans that appear in the DIY book (top right in the picture below), which was a birthday present from M. Others are refinements which result from closer and longer observation. For example, now that we have cleared most of the back fence of ivy we have discovered that we will have to build reasonably high retaining walls, a lot closer to the back fence than planned, because so much soil has washed away from the back fence that the bottom of the fence-posts have been left clear of the earth and the fence is falling over.

So, we need to build a retaining wall higher than the bottom of the fence, which is about 40–60cm above present ground level. In fact, we need to build this wall as high as we can without requiring planning approval (which is 1m), and we need soil to put behind it. By widening the path, we can use all the excavated soil to back-fill the new retaining wall. The side-benefit of this is that we get a much wider path and since the existing path is way too narrow for a wheel-barrow, this is a good thing. Also, on a block with precious little flat ground …

[Herb Garden bed, elevation]

The lack of flat ground, and the need for some flat area in the garden, is the reason for the small deck, which is on the same level as the path, and extends the flat area out, under the gum tree. The large pentagonal herb bed is alligned to North. The point closest to the house will have quite a high front face to the retaining wall so that the top is level is 20cm above the path at the back. The front point could be as much at 1.2m above present ground level, which would require six 20cm-wide sleepers—close to the limit, and more than can be supported without spending serious money on steel uprights. So, we think we will construct the bottom two rows in masonry and cement the supports into this base.

[Vegie Garden bed, elevation]

Partly to cover up the masonry, and partly because a path between the house and the vegie beds will be useful anyway, we are likely to use the same masonry to support a duckboard path (see above, at left). Somehow or other we will join this path with the path between each garden-bed and with the deck, but where we will put the steps up to the deck won't be clear until we do a lot more measuring!