Garden Journal

30 September, 2010.  In 2009, Greg and I moved to Wangi Wangi on beautiful Lake Macquarie.
We purchased a pole home with views of  Myuna Bay, Lake Macquarie.  To us, there is just one small down side and that is the backyard.  What once must have been a beautiful Australian native garden was now overgrown with lantana. The slope is quite steep.
With a vague plan to plant a vegie patch, herbs and some fruit trees, we started clearing the lantana.  Greg would spend hours chopping away at the lantana.
This area has a number of pole homes and quite a lot of landscaping using copper logs. Research suggests arsenic is only taken up in carrots, radishes and beetroot.  Never the less we decided to make the vegie patch in raised garden beds.  We purchased 4 colour bond garden beds 1.3m wide x 3.3 m long and .8m high.  This wasn't going to be easy as work needed to be done on the slope before we could place the garden beds in situ.  Plus all soil would need to be brought in and carried down to the backyard in buckets.
We started by removing two trees, one that was growing up against the house and banged against the roof in the wind.  The other tree was about to split down the middle and would have probably fallen onto our neighbour's roof.  We decided to leave all the rest of the large trees.  This gave us an additional reason to put in raised garden beds as it is really hard to grow vegies under gum trees.  We will just need to be vigilant with the falling gum leaves.

Wangi Front Yard Sept.09 Looking towards the road

4 October 2010 The front yard faces east.  The photo was taken September 2009 before any work was done. Here I planted some herbs, flower and climbing roses.  I also added two pomegranate trees (deciduous), one on the verge to the south and one north of the drive way.
Also added a chair, and small pathway between our drive way and the neighbour's driveway.  In front of this is a small vegie patch for all those things you may need in a hurry.  You might say it is my Zone 1 (Permaculture).