Digging Deep!

It’s no surprise that I love to improve, refresh and transform things. A room, a space, a house, and more recently our lives. 

With a property of over 1700 square meters full of trees, shrubs and lawn, I’ve not only had to learn HOW to garden but to love it too. At our previous house the soil was sandy and new plants had about a 50/50 chance of survival and then might only grow 1cm every other year from there … great odds to invest time and money into.
The soil here is rich and dark and things grow happily which makes gardening just that much more fun. 

Finally the builders have left, schools are closed and work has shut down for the Christmas break. My mind has had some time to decompress, the cortisol from the daily hustle has started to recede and some space for fun has re emerged…the perfect time to get stuck into a garden project.
We have no wheel barrow and our garden tools resemble my daughters doll house accessories but no matter, I can do this! We currently have a rockery loaded with succulents, cacti and of course….rocks sitting right in a prime spot of the garden! My idea is to make it go away and replace it with more lush, happy plants full of colour that will bring more birds and butterflies to the garden. 

So I set off trying to dismantle this monstrosity. Rock by rock, spade full by spade full. Each rock and each spadeful has to be reallocated around the garden to level this area out. Wow – did I under estimate this! Some rocks were so big I just had to roll them around, flip by flip, to get them into a better spot. 

It only took about a week but finally I’ve moved the soil, succulents and rocks and I started to create a pathway through the garden to add some charm.

Now comes the fun part – planting. I’m trying to use as much as I can from what we’ve got to minimise how much I need to buy. I even tried my hand at propagating a few things from my moms garden but so far that has proved to be 100% unsuccessful for me. I have little pots all around the house that look like this and I keep telling my husband not to throw them out because there’s still a chance they might come back to life….or maybe they just won’t and I should just give my money to the professionals who do this for a living. 

The plants are now in, and now we wait for them to grow and fill out the space. The kids have even added their little fairy garden to make sure all the magic comes to and stays in our garden. 

What did I learn? 

– Spades are hard work!

– Propagating skills need attention (any advice welcome)

– We need a wheel barrow!

– I love gardening!