From nothing but some scrappy, very sandy and dusty (and ant-ridden) 'lawn' to this wonderful bush garden in about 2.5 years. After metres upon metres of mulch and planting around 100 or so native plants, the big bush garden gives me endless joy. I walk through it several times a week, just keen to see what's in flower or what has new growth.
We've made little mounds with any soil that we've excavated (when we were digging out the fish pond for example) to create a more 'natural feel' and also incorporated a few logs and large branches to give it a bushyfied look and to add to the habitat value.
The biogeographer in me is a little cross due to the rather haphazard way I approached the species composition - there are rainforest shrubs and trees in amongst woodland and dry forest species such as banksias and grevilleas but the garden seems to be coming together alright.
There are lots of smaller enclosed spaces within the garden that create nice little spots for wallabies to take shelter and by the looks of the churned up mulch, bandicoots now forage in it during the night. I've still not seen any small skinks, and I'm interested seeing how long it takes for them to colonise the garden. Without these small skinks, I doubt that there will be any snakes spending much time there yet.
From nothing but some scrappy, very sandy and dusty (and ant-ridden) 'lawn' to this wonderful bush garden in about 2.5 years. After metres upon metres of mulch and planting around 100 or so native plants, the big bush garden gives me endless joy. I walk through it several times a week, just keen to see what's in flower or what has new growth.
We've made little mounds with any soil that we've excavated (when we were digging out the fish pond for example) to create a more 'natural feel' and also incorporated a few logs and large branches to give it a bushyfied look and to add to the habitat value.
The biogeographer in me is a little cross due to the rather haphazard way I approached the species composition - there are rainforest shrubs and trees in amongst woodland and dry forest species such as banksias and grevilleas but the garden seems to be coming together alright.
There are lots of smaller enclosed spaces within the garden that create nice little spots for wallabies to take shelter and by the looks of the churned up mulch, bandicoots now forage in it during the night. I've still not seen any small skinks, and I'm interested seeing how long it takes for them to colonise the garden. Without these small skinks, I doubt that there will be any snakes spending much time there yet.
1 comment:
It looks fabulous, I'm sure it would be wonderful to wander through. Hopefully something I'll get to do one of these days.
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