The objective and motivation behind this project was to convert the front and backyard gardens of this house into a beautiful home garden. Our theme was comfort, country like, vintage, a real home to come home too. Our challenge was to create a peaceful garden setting with a touch of creativity, art and tranquil whilst meeting the needs of a young family by incorporating a simple herb and vegie garden with lots of colours, beautiful green and flowery colours with fresh strawberries to give it the family touch.
The yards and gardens had to look good and also promote different purposes and appeal to different audiences:
- peaceful & relaxing for the adults of the house who work and also study
- colourful and playful place for the younger boys to give their playstation a break and come out & play
- a functional family garden including; herbs, vegies, fruits and flowers
- a great place for entertaining guests
The challenge:
- to get the family involved in the gardening process for the first time
- to keep the family motivated to see the garden flourish and see the rewarding outcomes
All this was achieved with a lot of hard work and TLC - Tender Love and Care.
Have a look at the before and after pictures let us know what you think.
Stage 1: The cleaning & clearing process
Like an artist about to start on a painting, we needed a fresh start, to clear up the space so we can start brainstorming on ideas. This including clearing the yard and the garden beds.
Area 1 - Backyard - Area between the double garage (side) and pergola
Clearing the area - a fresh canvas!
Paving blocks were reused in the pergola.
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Area 2 - Pergola to sustainable herb and flower house
Backyard Cleared!
We mowed the grass and moved the pot plants off the grass so we could clear the grass.
In the meantime the boys already began playing in the yard with their portable tennis game.
The basketball hoop was moved back onto the concrete area off the grass.
Stage 2: Collecting existing materials and reusing them
Backyards are full of great things that have been put aside with no use, which are a gardener's heaven. In this backyard we found numerous things that we could make use of including; pots, pebbles, great soil and ornaments.
Area 3 - Outside pergola
Area 5 - Home-made Zen Garden - enouraging peace and creativity
Here the garden has been cleared of grass and weeds and we started to place elements into the garden including:
- an outdoor solar power budda statue with light
- outdoor solar lights
- strawberries planted in a white pot found earlier in the yard
- other pot plants
Stage 3: Gardening
The next step was to decide on plants.
Stage 4: Fixing fallen structures, required repairs
Stage 5: Decorating & Shopping for ornaments
Ongoing TLC and vital for any living garden or front/back yard.
AFTER
Milk crates and styrofoam boxes were collected from the local markets near commercial rubbish bins.
Styrofoam boxes arent recyclable so we have reused them here for as mini garden boxes to plant herbs and tomates.
Here we have: Here we have: (to the right of the picture on left)
- Asian herbs: mint leaves, basil, lemon grass and - cherry tomatoes (tall plant, right from lettuce boxes)
Ngo gai (Eryngium foetidum /culantro(not cilantro) - Truss tomatoes (right of cherry tomatoes)
/mexican coriander (on left in box filled with water) - Again lemon grass (from picture on left)
- Lettuce (top right) - Jasmine flower pot (on right)
- Chinese cabbage (top center)
On the right hand side of the pergola we have beautiful christmas plants picked up at the City of Sydney Floral display giveaway in February 2011. They create a beautiful Chrismas feel, an exciting addition to the pergola which adds brightness to the area.
BEFORE
AFTER
We created a simple centre piece to the garden and The final result. We added hanging flowers, placed
moved the red cactus flowers onto the brick level. the strawberry pot on the brick level piece/stand.
And placed an old wheel burrow full of strawberries
to add the home garden touch.
Area 4 - Garden beds - Garden beds had to be cleared of weeds and grass for replating.
Pebbles - to prevent the grass from growing in the Zen garden we added pebbles, which were dug out from one of the garden beds near the pergola. These were just burried under the dirt and being wasted.
So we had the boys and girls in the family to help clean the pebbles, spray and scrub them.
Zen Garden created
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