Garden Makeover

After 20 years of home ownership I have finally accepted the fact that I hate gardening. It's something that many people are passionate about and I always used to have a slightly guilty feeling when I admitted that gardening wasn't my thing. Now that I have come out about it I feel great.

Our house is about 10 years old and we've owned it for two years. The garden is small but had got to a point where the shrubs were getting woody or diseased and the trees were outgrowing their space. Our neighbours all around us are keen gardeners with manicured lawns and very tidy gardens and I didn't want us to be known as the people with the worst garden in the street. After a little negotiation I managed to persuade my husband to let me have the garden replanted. I pretty much gave my landscaper carte blanche to do whatever he thought would work and my brief was that it needed to be easy care but other than that I didn't have strong views on what I liked or didn't like. The only tree that was to remain was the lemon tree. It's not a pretty tree and is in a really dumb place but it is just so prolific there's no way I could have it dug out.

Here are the before and after photos...

Left hand front of the house - I'm not even sure what plants we had to begin with that's how little I know or care about gardening! I do know the taller plant by the door is a pretty pink camellia.



Right hand front of house. I know the photos don't look much different but they are. The taller shrubs along here are small camellias.



The famous lemon tree.



The tall trees in the before photos are pittosporums and the white blooming shrub is a Mexican orange blossom. Note the tangle of weeds in the corner strangling the last of my freesias. Did I mention I hate gardening?




My landscaper told me that he wasn't the kind of gardener who over planted. He said that our garden area was so small we'd just be pulling stuff out before we knew it. Despite that advice my initial reaction when I got home to see the garden was complete horror at the nudeness of it all. I had the lanscaper come back and put in a whole bunch of pansies to fill in the gaps and now they are flowering the garden looks a whole lot better. The new plants have taken root and some have even come into flower but I need to wait until it stops raining to take some more photos. Stay tuned for a garden update soon.