Dirty deeds done..

but not cheap!

When we first bought our house one of the projects we tackled soon after settling in was re-doing the garden beside the driveway.  It was seriously overgrown and had become a dumping ground for all kinds of weird things.  We tossed out a whole lot of scraggly lavender shrubs, old pots, rubbishy bits of gardening odds, covered the garden with weed mat and then bark.

Now, 12 years later we decided to re-do it again.  A few of the trees had got too tall and were tangling in the wires to the house.  Some of the shrubs were dying off or getting past their best.  You can kind of see what I mean in this photo.  It's the garden on the left hand side.

So off came the weed mat, down came the trees and after a lot of physical work we finally had a tidier garden.  We got a bunch of new plants - mainly natives - from Oratia Native Plants, Mitre10 and Kings Plant Barn.

Stuff everywhere! We filled up the garden bag and took a huge trailer load to the dump.  There were some stubborn stumps in there that required pulling out.  DH managed to pull 2 out with the car/tow bar/rope but the others we had to dig out.

Weed mat about to go on.

Finished look. DH was keen to make the garden more attractive to butterflies so there are some plants suitable for red/yellow admirals and coppers in the mix.

 I divided up the astelia and put them around the place.

We hope to attract some skinks with these stones and partially buried pots.

The vegetable garden is planted up too.  I'm hopeful of a big harvest!  That is the best part about this time of year... the anticipation and hope of new life, harvesting a crop of vegetables from your back yard.  We're already enjoying radishes, spinach and rocket.