Phase 2 of the garden make over. Well phases 2, 3 and 4! Removal of one garden, building of another and a new lawn. It’s a biggie alright.
This garden bed, whilst looking like it wouldn’t put up much fight was actually a beast of a thing to remove. There was no other way but to jump right in an start hacking away. You could see bush rock around the edges but what I didn’t realise was it had been concreted into place. Nightmare.
Once all of that was painstakingly removed, I had to tackle the tree roots. The plants didn’t look that significant but their roots certainly were. Added to this, there was an old pool fence post concreted into place at the back of the garden bed too which had to be dug out. They were certainly generous with their concrete… The bush rock was sold on eBay for not a huge amount BUT, due to their size and weight, would have cost me a fortune to get rid of.
Some of the huge root bases for such tiny plants
Then it was onto building a narrow garden bed along the length of the fence. I wanted to soften it, create a screen and bring another green element into the bland backyard. It was backbreaking stuff and ended up taking two days but I got there in the end.
The new garden bed
Trying to keep with a more tropical garden, I planted drought tolerant yukkas. I bought 10 for $40 off eBay and they arrived all ready to be planted in an Australia Post satchel! As you can see below, they were a decent size too. (Stay tuned for pictures of how big they got…)
New lawn time!!! Luckily I had the help of my girlfriend’s husband on this one (and Mum pitched in too!) He was a treasure and had a nifty machine that cut up the old turf. Then it was down with tones of soil and a top layer of sand – all of which had to be wheel burrowed down the long driveway and spread out to create an even surface for the new grass.
Layering soil then sand in readiness for the new lawn
I decided to remove at least 3 rows (1.2m) of paving down the back to increase the lawn area to over 9m in length. The paved area was massive and didn’t really need to be. By doing this (along with the new back left garden) I had stacks of 40cmx40cm pavers spare. These came in handy when working on the front of the house but the rest were snapped up on eBay.
I stored the old grass in the side passage. And week by week, I added small amounts to the garbage collection saving me more money.
Watering her in after a very long day
But I do love getting my hands dirty
All it needed to do was take and GROW!
girl up a ladder 