Native meadow to garden beds
Part of the native meadow in November 2011
When the garden was first developed, we wanted an open space in front of the house and decided to plant a native meadow.
Above is the Meadow Garden as it appeared in December 2012. The dominant plants are the grasses and Ammobium alatum, with the latter being the dominant species. This garden was very difficult to maintain as weeds were hard to find until they became established. The final event that made us decide to change the garden was that the arborists had to bring a 200 tonne crane through the garden to reach some Pinus radiata trees on the other side of the property that had died. Rather than build a road on the other side, this seemed the most reasonable approach for removing the large trees. The result was that much of the Meadow Garden was destroyed by the crane and trucks. We decided, therefore, to remove the meadow and convert the space to garden beds for mostly low growing plants, except for he trees.
The first step was to remove the topsoil and plant material from the meadow. Then Ros laid out the paths which traverse the garden in sinuous horizontal and vertical directions. Then the remaining soil of the beds was deeply cultivated as seen in the two pictures above, the subsoil was smoothed and a topsoil laid on top. The topsoil is a sandy loam that is used under new turf installations
After the topsoil was laid, the edges of the paths were established with metal edging bent to follow the curves of the paths. The paths were then rolled and crushed granite was added and then rolled in again. Irrigation pipe was laid on top of the soil and micro sprinklers were setup. We had tried drip irrigation in other parts of the garden but it wasn’t satisfactory because the drippers kept getting blocked. Sprinklers are easy to see if they are not working. Within each bed, a mulched path was made that looped through the bed giving access to the plants. The beds were additionally edged with coarse river pebbles and then were mulched with a finer gravel that was of a similar colour to the house (see pictures below).
Above left is a before image when the meadow was in full bloom and the right is just after the initial planting of the new garden. The mallee eucalypt is Eucalytpus stricta which is a very attractive small tree.
