Garden visit to Keri's house

28 June 2012

Keri's House

Maungatapu

Tauranga

On a windy, crisp winter morning, a bunch of gorgeous gardening girls wrapped up warm for a stroll around our Maungatapu garden.

We bought the house in February. The previous owners had commissioned a landscape plan, of which they left us a few copies, but it's evident they did not stick to the planting guide. As a result, it was a bit of a mixed bag. She had a banana palm next to a hydrangea, and ferns in amongst the tropical rock-bed. 

There were also two big sharp triangular gardens. We surmised they might have been to draw the eye to the view, but they annoyed me.

While I like structure in the tropical part of the garden, I prefer flower gardens and lawn areas to be a bit more rambling - less sharp lines. I have absolutely no technical garden design expertise and my approach is probably all up the boohai but that's the joy of it being my garden - I can do whatever I want!

In a storm around March a Phoenix palm inside the planter box started to topple. Dave dug it out and we planted a nikau...which promptly died. The planter box garden was covered in pebbles.

Date palms and Queen palms around the pool

There was an overgrown corner near the pool where nothing was growing and the pebbles had run out. That was the bit we decided to leave to Steve. He ripped out all the plants (none of them belonged there) pulled up the weedmat, threw in some compost and planted mature palms to start addressing the imbalance with the other half of the garden. He also moved clumps of taro and carved up an agave into smaller clumps, and filled in the pebbles. While it was a lot of work, it's one of those things where most other people wouldn't recognise the difference. But where it will be striking is in 2-3 years when the bushes have grown and the corner starts to resemble the rest of the pool garden. Without that work, it would have always been a sad and empty corner where nothing grew.

The black bark which has replaced the pebbles under the yukka in the planter box looks fantastic. Of course, as with any 'makeover', it now highlights the fact the paint job on the planter boxes needs attention. Next year!!

Perhaps the most transformed part of the garden is the entranceway.

They had a row of some spiky houseplant, a sickly frangipani and some date palms which were failing to thrive. I was determined to keep the banana palm but wanted it out of the fruit orchard (!!) so we thought we'd try it at the entranceway. I love it there! Steve replanted the cycad to make it the feature of a garden by the front door and I love the way he tilted it to face the sun. He also re-used some of the plants from the corner of the pool garden to continue the tropical theme at the entrance. Black bark again, which looks great and he says the yellow grasses will really pop when they get bigger.

What next? Again, the parts of the garden which are tidy now accentuate the parts which are still unkempt! Next big project is the orchard. We are going to dig out a mowing strip, lay it with grey bricks like those on the house, and I want to plant a ground cover (very Xanthe!) under the fruit trees. Turns out the ground cover Xanthe used (leptinella rotunda) is very rare. So Steve gave me some names for some alternatives. We are going to go for a native called pratia angulata. Dave is going to build me a small planter box along the fence line. I'm thinking one piece of timber high and 50cms wide. I was going to grow crops which require more space - sweet corn, watermelon, zucchini, potatoes, and some berries  - but Donna's pointed out I'll need to pick plants which are okay in the shade. First things first, we need to rip out the orange blossom! Unfortunately it's going to be a bit of a dog's breakfast until spring, when I can fill in the triangles of former garden with grass. Hopefully the lemon and lime take off!

Michelle has pointed out I need to train my star jasmine or they'll bush out and that isn't the look I'm going for! I also need to tidy up the berry patch (just strawberries at the moment but I'd love to have raspberries there and I may even plant a passionfruit, although mum reckons they attract some annoying hopper so I might just make do with encouraging the neighbour's one to come over).

Big project for spring will be my fern rockery outside the bathroom window. At the moment it's all over the place - some tropicals, some cacti, some southern alps grasses! Will be painting the trellis black to match the fence around the other side.

Next year (when we've saved up some money!) we will attack the garden outside our room. It's a perfect spot for a spa pool and we have a few ideas on how we could do it. I'd be just as happy with a bush bath (plumbed to the hot water from the bathroom) but we'll see. I need to plant something to grow over the trellis - Michelle suggested the wisteria some of you collected from the last garden. Will see how they take off and might nab a clipping.

Long term, we will focus on the access down the hill. I'd like to put up a wrought iron fence and get some steps put in. It's very steep!

The council is building a floating boardwalk around the edge of the estuary. We'd love to build steps down to meet it. It'll take money as we'll need retaining walls and structured steps and gates at the top and bottom. But it would be fun to have a more rambling and wild place to chuck plants and embrace the overgrown look! We had a beautiful garden in the middle of a paddock at the bottom of our farm growing up. It was huge and overgrown and lovely mosses and climbers rambled all over fallen logs. I remember lots of small white flowers and butterflies galore. I'd love Lyla to have an enchanted garden like that to play in when she's older but it will cost money to make it safe!

Thanks for coming over ladies. It was such fun to talk you round our garden and have Steve there to rattle off some fancy names and give you a few tips on plants for specific uses. If you ever want to track him down, he’s on groundsworks@slingshot.co.nz

Looking forward to inviting you back in the future so you can (hopefully) see my orchard as I imagine it!

Keri