Front Yard Blitz

When we bought our house there were established garden beds that were well designed, and well constructed.  The plantings were mainly shrubs and grasses and  featured quite a few native plants.

The front gardens had several wattles and bottle brushes and they were getting rather messy.  We are on a corner block and the street appeal of the two garden beds weren't terribly good.  

The one saving grace was the great show the wattles put on each spring. (Excuse the poor condition of the lawn, as we were just coming out of severe water restrictions and our winter frosts don't help.)  However, the wattles to the right of the photo are not doing very well, with branches breaking out.  They would be about 15 years old, and wattles generally are not very long lived.  Behind the power pole there is a bottle brush that suffered badly in the drought, so is also looking rather daggy.

Also, next to the mailbox is a grass that has sharp leaves and spiky flowers and grows quite large, so it is rather difficult to actually open the mailbox.  It is in its trimmed state in this photo.

At the other end of the gardens is a grevillia with beautiful flowers, but it has grown way too large as well.

So what to do?  Mick decided that the two sad wattle trees (not the one near the mailbox) would come out.

Here's another view, from the house after the wattles had finished flowering.  You can see better how a side had broken out.

The view from our front door.  Notice that the lawn is starting to come back, which is very nice to see.

And from the street.

My goodness, doesn't that look different.

What a change - there's a house in there.......and lots of prunings to take to the tip.  We had decided to keep the ratty bottle brush and give it a very heavy pruning after it flowers.  Apparently they can handle it.

Lots of tilling then took place, which revealed loads of redundant watering system.

Good soil and compost was dug in after the stumps were removed and a golden rain tree planted. 

It is a small tree that should provide yellow flowers during summer followed by decorative seed pods and colourful leaves in autumn.  Together with the spring flowering bottle brushes, there should be some colour all year round.  Well, that is the theory. We also topped the bed off with some pine bark, but no photo at that stage.

After starting to tidy up the one bed we thought the other was still looking fairly daggy, so despite the beautiful golden show in spring, decided to remove the other wattle tree.

Wow! What a difference.  Now we could see the shape of the garden bed.  Another very full trailer load of prunings went to the tip.

At that point we removed some grasses, moved some others to fill gaps around the edge of the corner garden and removed some plants that were just too misshapen from being crowded out by the wattles.

We then transplanted a few lavenders from the back yard that had either been self sown or were being crowded out by other plants. The best thing is that you can now access the mailbox without getting attacked by the vicious grass.  Hopefully, that will also reduce the number of snails that take up residence in the mailbox.

The other major improvements were to move our single furrow plough from the back garden, where you could hardly see it, to the mailbox garden and to visit our mate's property out of town and get a few interesting rocks.  Another bottle brush has been planted behind the plough, but it is still quite small.

Our lawn should continue to improve as well after it has been cored, fertilised and some extra seed distributed.

There are two bottle brushes in the corner garden.  This one is just starting to flower nicely.  It will have a bit of a hair cut once the blooms have finished.  Likewise the overgrown grevillia behind it.  We will enjoy their flowers first.

So the big reveal.......

From the corner.  There are now no gaps in the edging of grasses, a golden rain tree in the middle with two bottle brushes, which will be pruned shortly.  There is a lavender and a couple of low growing natives.

The letter box garden looks quite different.  Other than planting a couple of lavenders, the other low shrubs were already there.  There is a very small bottle brush behind the plough, which will hopefully be a bit weeping in shape, once it grows, so it won't hide the plough.

So, a final comparison.......

We're pretty happy with how it has turned out.