Have you ever seen those computer-controlled fountain displays? Jets of water, sometimes illuminated at night, sometimes with a musical accompaniment, erupting and dissipating, children running, squealing, laughing through those summer jets, colour, and form, constantly changing. That’s the effect that we want to create in our new garden – a riotous, seasonally-changing palette of colours.
We have moved south from Darwin, via a side trip to France, and after the unending greenery of our old tropical garden, we’re itching to create a colourful floral wonderland. We moved into a new housing estate in early winter – a bare, cold landscape, with the prospect of recreating Claude Monet’s inspirational Giverny garden, in Ballarat, our challenge.
Our soil is terrible – heavy clay with a thin veneer of ‘dirt’, overlaid by the developers to enthuse the lawn growers! We will bring in a rotary hoe and lots of gypsum. The local garden centre confirms they can deliver several truckloads of premium topsoil.
We will scallop a series of low, mounded soil embankments to form a front boundary. There will be a modest lily pond, with a little solar pump moving the water, providing an aural tinkle, near the front door.
The dining table is heaving with butcher’s paper, covered in detailed notes on form, colour and ideas for achieving our displays. We explore all the nurseries, recording planting-lists against colour, height, and seasonal highlights. Our dreams are being collated.
It is agreed that the front garden needs to achieve continuous, and riotous colour, while still providing a modest providore. The mounds are to be planted out with winter-flowering daffodils, to be followed in Spring with blond-yellow Japanese, and blue Dutch Iris, spiking upwards through the spent daffs. An understory of deep orange Californian Poppy seeds will provide a contrasting colour burst, leaving just enough room for a dozen pink poppies. To complete the mounds, native Kangaroo and Wallaby grass seeds will be scattered along the tops, to germinate, where they will, to provide height and movement in the breezes.
We agree to sacrifice a section in the front for three, small grassy spaces. These pockets will have an edging of red, orange, and mauve Osteospernum – South African daisies, providing an abundance of colourful splodges throughout spring and early summer. They will eventually move up and over the mounds.
Espaliered quince, cherry and apricot trees will occupy the spaces between the mounds. These will provide a tall, dense screen between us and our neighbours across the road. Spring blossoms moving to a late summer fruiting, the quince a late autumn arrival. There will be orangey gravel pathways, connecting the whole.
Trellises along the eastern side of the house will provide support for screens of white and blue Hardenbergia, while a two-metre-wide frame on the western side of the house will support a Wisteria vine. It will provide mid spring, massed blue flower clusters, forming a dense green awning against the summer’s hot afternoon sun. Autumn pruning will enable valuable winter sunshine to penetrate the house.
The backyard is going to be mostly dedicated to food production, albeit space is being set aside for a cubbyhouse and secret passages planned for small, future adventurers. Miniature varieties of European and Japanese plums, a single rootstock, grafted and supporting several apple and pear varieties, a Tahitian lime, Meyer lemon, a cumquat, and two matching cold-climate avocados will provide delicious rewards and pantry fodder.
It remains for vegetable beds, and we decide that the self-watering wicking beds will probably be the most practical. There is space for four beds, and a three-bin composting system.
A little garden shed will be partially screened by the installation of three large water tanks, one reticulated back into the kitchen, two to supplement our generally sparse, gardening needs. All beds will be mulched seasonally.
Marigold announces her pregnancy as we start to plant out the garden. Our Earth Mother – Gaia bestows her imprimatur!