We all have neglected spaces in our gardens, or no? Well, I have a few, but I have a good excuse. I’ve only been gardening properly for a few months and it is taking time to get to all the areas that need work and to acquire the right plants for each space – add to that an area that was being cared for being destroyed by plumbing works and I’ve had lots to do and fix!
There is a funny little space in my back garden that has been crying for some attention for years. It forms part of “Dexter’s garden”, the space where he is allowed to make as much mess as he pleases, where he does not get reprimanded if he tramples the plants, a space where he can just be the great big 65kg, exuberant Rottweiler that he is. Seems fair, right? I think so. But that doesn’t make gardening in this space easy.
The reason he was given this part of the garden is that it starts at the end of a long alley way at the side of the house where we throw balls for him. It is his favourite game. Mom throws the ball and he charges up the alley to retrieve it and then charges all the way back to bring it back for a repeat throw. On and on it goes … Problem with this game is that the ball ends up in this part of the garden and all the charging after the ball makes creating a pretty garden here very difficult almost impossible. Hence it was christened “Dexter’s Garden” and pretty much neglected.
But then we had the plumbing disaster, we laid new lawn and … well I decided to start doing something in the area.
But todays post is not actually about Dexter’s garden, its about the tiny triangular patch opposite his garden which has an old tree stump in it and nothing else. I have never shown this patch before – I used to crop it off photos or angle the camera in such a way that it excluded this patch – because it was embarrassingly ugly. Really.
I still didn’t have a plan but I did have a few plants that require full sun and nowhere suitable to put them, or so I thought. One day as I was again bemoaning the fact that these full sun plants were declining in their current spaces I had the idea to move them to this patch as it gets pretty hot in that corner and seems to get plenty of sun. So I moved the plants here and all three plants are Happy as Larry, having sprouted plenty of new growth in the two weeks they’ve been planted here. I’m not sure they really work together, but its a start … I plan to add a creeper and something that will grow over and around the tree stump in due course.
I planted:
1). Solanum rantonnetii (Blue Potato Bush) – I’ve had this shrub for months and it never grew an inch. In fact it was losing its leaves and looked as if it was about to die. I planted it, cut back all the dead branches, pruned it a little and within two weeks in its new space its trebled in size and has started flowering.
2). Lynchnis – this was an impulse buy. The label said full sun and I had no idea what I was going to do with it … so it got planted here. So far its doing fine. Its grown a bit in the past two weeks and is covered in blooms. I like it a lot. I love the silver/grey foliage and the bright red flowers. Cute.
3). This was my first “Bamboo” purchase – unfortunately I lost the tag so I don’t have a clue what it is (Alan, are you reading this?). I think its a ground cover type bamboo – I do recall that the label said its a “clumping” type bamboo, and I’m really hoping its Pleioblastus viridistriatus which I’ve wanted that for some time ever since I saw it on this blog: It’s Not Work, It’s Gardening.
So here are some photos to show what it looked like before and after with close ups of the plants (you can click the photos to enlarge)
[one_half]”Dexters garden” in August – a real mess
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[one_half_last]The arrow shows “that” awful corner
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[one_half]Photo taken today – we have progress!
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[one_half_last]The “corner” this post is all about
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[one_half]Plant 1 – Solanum rantonnetii (Blue Potato Bush)
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[one_half_last]Plant 2 – Lynchnis (coronata I think)
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[one_half]Plant 3 – Unknown small Bamboo
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[one_half_last]Dexter enjoying “his” garden
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Dexter seems to like his “new” garden. Strangely we’ve had no plants damaged even though we still throw the ball for him, but we are a little more careful about where we throw it now.
The lawn is coming along nicely too. I’m very happy with it so far.
Happy weekend gardening
xxx
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