Good Gardening and Landscaping© John Bottomley
Oct 31, 2000
Last week I decided to do a little bit of landscaping at the back of the house; a part of the garden that has been neglected over the years. As a matter of fact I remember specifically getting a few magazines, several years ago, about just that – landscaping. Being more than a bit of a hoarder I had a look in a cupboard that contains several old newspapers and several old magazines, mostly about gardening. Lo and Behold, there were seven magazines that I could refer to help with the rearrangement of the back garden.
Would you believe the dates on some of them go as far back as 1975? A quarterly publication called Good Gardening was one of them.
However, there are still some good ideas from that long ago and I set out last weekend to prepare the ground. It is quite an easy job because the ground is very flat in that part of the garden. The only hard thing is the lifting and moving of the slabs, which I have decided to use. There is a quite excellent idea in one of the magazines that uses evenly spaced grey slabs, with crushed brick and tile in between the slabs. I say slabs. But the article I was reading from so many years ago, by a Babs Macnab, from South Australia said that the paving used was exfoliated black granite. Whatever it was it looks very attractive from the pictures.
My garden is very shady and I have surrounded it by about six Eucalyptus Grandis that are now about 12 metres (40 feet) tall, which cast their dappled shade over the ground. I think I will plant some Frangipani, Ficus, Poinsettias and Azaleas and Camellias. We already have a very well established rhododendron. It is also an ideal place, in my opinion, to place a couple of large containers filled, perhaps, with water lilies.
It seems also that there is a need to fill up the spaces between the slabs with some ground covers of many types. I suppose one of the difficulties with managing a garden in this spot for me would be the constant sweeping up of the leaves off the gum trees, this can be a bit of a chore. However, I am going to give it a try and see what the results are in a few years from now.
We hope by creating a lot more shade to attract some of the small bird life that abounds in this part of Perth, Western Australia. In addition, this will be another small area where we can sit in the shade in the late afternoon, and perhaps sip a glass of wine, white or red, the choice is immaterial. Whatever it is, it is bound to taste delightful after a hard day at the typewriter.
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