A Garden To Defeat The Drought

This should really have gone into my other blog, "Drought is Killing My Garden", but in the end
it turned out to be a little too long, so it got one of it's own.

Just in front of the house, in the SouthWest of the garden, was an empty patch of soil,
where the Kunzea used to be.   It died a couple of years ago, from the drought.

We've been looking at that patch of ground for a while; it's been used as a dump for
spare mulch, grass clippings etd., so got a bit untidy.   This weekend we finally decided
to go ahead and do something with it.

In the back garden I have a small cacti and succulent patch, which is suffering badly -
not from the drought, but from digging chickens, who can't resist wrecking things.     It
seemed like a good idea to move the surviving plants to the front garden, and make
use of the empty patch.   It was a hard decision to make, as the front is almost all
native plants, but hey, we had to do something!

First we set the size for the new section, then I brought in some new soil, while my
partner dug around the edge of it, so that we could edge it with redgum logs.    This
was necessary because the finishing touch would be white quartz pebbles to help
in keeping a little moisture in the soil.

While Paul was cutting the logs to size, I worked on landscaping the soil, leaving a
few dips where the rocks were to go.    When that was done, down went the wet
newspaper, quite thickly, to help keep the soil moist, followed by the large rocks to
highlight the plants.

Then it was time to go and dig the required plants out of the back garden, and bring
them to their new home.      Some of them may not make it, due to chicken trauma, but
we'll do the best we can for them.

Layout is important, so first we placed the plants where we thought they'd look best,
as it's easier to change positions before they are planted!   When we were happy
with the way they looked, into the ground they went.

The final touch was collecting the quartz pebbles from where they had been in use
before - that was the hardest part, I think, bending down and collecting them, then
bending down and replacing them in another part of the garden.   It took ages!

Just to make the plants feel really at home, we watered them in again, with a bucket
of rainwater from our tank.   Hopefully they will all survive, and some already look as
if they belong there.

It was a long job, interspersed with some tree and bush trimming, because we didn't
want the branches to shade this area.    Now we're both tired, dirty, and have achy
backs, and are looking forward to our showers.      It's been worth it though, as the
new garden looks really good, and the quartz pebbles around the plants add to the
dry area look.      Hopefully, it will turn out to be a garden to beat the drought..........

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