Friday, December 18, 2009

Planting at the beach.


It was like summer at the beach today . A mild windless brilliant sunny cloudless day with temperatures in the low to mid 60’s.

Most of the plants had arrived on site and were ready to be placed for planting.

From Beach House


But before any planting could commence we needed to craft gopher protection cages for the plants lest we treat the gophers with yummy root salads.

From Beach House



This particular piece of property has a history worthy of a Caddy Shack movie award for its active population of gophers.

Everything and every place within the garden required heavy duty galvanised half inch hardware cloth ( it’s called hardware cloth but it is actually wire ) . We installed it under the dry lay flagstone, the soon to be seeded Eco lawn and under all the decomposed granite pathways.

From Beach House


In the picture above you’ll notice a couple of missing bluestone pieces. Those locations are going to have carved flat stone fish inlaid into the path.

We’re doing this to mark the locations of the septic system clean out valves.

One of the guys tried his hand at doing a fish cut out. Not bad but it’s a no go. I made a template for them to use and they’ll use that. But this cut out can be inlaid in the childrens vegetable garden or in the fire ring area.

From Beach House


I found some pretty nice looking plants for the garden.

We’re especially pleased with the Arbutus marina trees that will be about 7 to 8 feet tall once in the ground and about 3 feet wide.

From Beach House


We’re using a lot of Austrailan and South African plants such as Banksias, Leucadendrons,

Proteas and tons and tons of succulents

Photo of the flowers on Hakea francisciana

From Beach House


Some of the succulents will be cut from my garden and planted as cuttings

From Pina Colada


During the upcoming Christmas break I will be working with the 2 children who will play in this garden. We will be making our own ceramic tiles for a mosaic band that will be installed at the entrance to the fire ring sitting area. I’m looking forward to this and can’t wait to see what the kids come up with !

I’ll post some photos of their art work and the finished mosaic work when its done.



6 comments:

danger garden said...

Wonderful! What a great experience for the kids. I look forward to watching the project progress, thanks for taking us along!

Desert Dweller said...

That will be a great marriage of Arbutus & succulents...enjoying your blog, BTW.

Linda@ Lime in the Coconut said...

Wow...what a beaut! LOVE how you are incorporating (and getting down on your knees) with the kidlets!

Christine said...

Wow, sounds like such a hands-on project! Can't wait to see the fishies that made the cut.

Susan aka Miss R said...

The lengths we need to go to make a garden sometimes astounds me.

geefe alba said...

Very nice setting for children. I always love to see children learn and discover things about their surroundings especially when they're in the garden! To have a more enjoyable experience, try these safety tips when gardening with children.