Autumn Wanderings

At least once or twice a day, Eleanor and I will go for a wander around the garden. If she’s bored inside, a little restless but I want to stretch her out until a nap, outside we go! There’s lots of change going on in the garden at the moment, being Autumn and all, so I thought I’d take you along for a wander too…

Our beautiful old horse chestnut tree has changed it’s leaves, dropping most from the top branches, along with it’s nuts and prickly cases, our lawn is covered in gorgeous Autumn leaves. Other trees in the garden have crunchy bright foliage too – the crabapple out our bedroom window which my sister and her family gifted us on our engagement, the Manchurian pear near the front gate, the other smaller horse chestnut on the driveway, the Chinese pistachio out the western side and the tree also on the drive which I believe is a sort of liquid amber…

Our main garden bed in the backyard I am slowly but surely filling up with a mix of cottagey (yes, cottagey) flowering perennials as well as little annuals here and there. There’s lavender, foxgloves, orange blossom, gardenia, miniature carpet roses, society garlic, with bulbs brewing away underneath. I just added in a dahlia, because everyone needs dahlias blooming in their life! Matt’s mum is the queen of salvias, so I stole some cuttings from her garden a few weeks ago of some beautiful deep, deep velvety purple salvias and stuck them in the ground here. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Gardening is all about trial and error, sometimes more error than gain, but that’s sometimes ok. The tiny little chrysanthemum I bought as a wee thing in Robe two years ago has grown and grown and grown – now ready to explode into bloom. I’ve done literally nothing to it, it is living off neglect alone I’m sure. Unfortunately the possums have been hard at work too, along with the lovely big established trees comes pesky possums who love to eat all my plants I’m afraid. So until the majority of my plantings are big enough to fend for themselves, my tree guards stay. Ho hum…

The established camellias and rhododendrons we have (thank-you Mrs Roach whose garden this once was!) are budding up ready to bloom. I now know that the pink one in the western garden will be first, followed by the other pink one under the tree by the drive, and lastly the nice white one out the lounge room window. I love getting to know our garden throughout the years, as it cycles through, changes, grows, evolves along with us. The Avonview lavender I planted along our path from the carport to the house I gave a haircut after it flowered, it’s grown prolifically like I knew it would, the Happy Wanderer on the fence too…

Out the western side of the house, which is really just a big lawn with a few trees (please excuse the state of our lawns, dismal!) I have grand plans for some big wide garden beds for more perennial borders against the fence. This was always my plan when we built the fence in 2010 and extended the yard out here. We have a little one already, which Matt won out with a little natives patch, it’s also going gang busters and I’m actually loving it, the silvery gums foliage especially. I’ve also got a picture in my mind of an arbour over our little white gate with some climbing roses or wisteria – in all our spare time!

While we’re at it writing a garden to-do list of mass proportion…the space between the driveway and the fence has always been a head scratcher. It’s a pain to mow as it slopes down so we want to just do away with any lawn there at all and make it all mulched. Initial thoughts were to plant an evergreen hedge along here, about fence height (photinia? lilly pilly? vibernum? camellia? privet? westringia?) but now Matt has got a bee in his bonnet about just mass plantings of low-ish growing natives (grevilleas, bottle brush). Thoughts? We don’t want trees as it would block our view out the front, and the drive is sort of tree lined on the other side anyway. It’s quite the length too, about 80-100 metres, stretching from the eventual veggie garden near the chooks down to our front gate, so it’s obviously going to cost about an arm and a leg to plant something every metre or so. Hmmm…

So very much to do in the garden, so very little time! Hoping this weekend we might get stuck into some serious veggie patch construction, as well as perhaps some new garden beds along the front of the shed for some roses. Getting there, getting there…

What’s going on in your garden at the moment?
Got any beautiful Autumn colour with gorgeous trees?
To-do list as long as our driveway?