Dad has watered and also bought a ladder

Some more news from Dad about the garden and also a ladder...

Email update (3rd February)

I managed to get to Amherst to water the orchard 2 weeks ago. It was okay after having recent rains, but the newly planted trees were showing marked stress. I transferred apx 800 gal from top tank to irrigation tank and connected the new trees to the grid and setup the slow flow to each tree of this tank of water.

I have purchased the ladder for your place. I took the option to get the longest ladder we could store in the container and move about by one person. I also spent the extra for a safety feature you will appreciate on the block: a self-leveler. The ladder I bought is a Bailey 5.1-9.09mtr (extends to 30ft). Anything higher than this is far too high to work without a scaffold.

Update: you can see a photo of the ladder here, where it was being used by Dad while working on the roof of another house at Toora (a whole other saga in itself)...

Recent photos

Here are a couple of photos taken a few weeks ago that Dad just sent me.

I can't get over how big the trees are now... they almost look like proper trees! As well I'm really pleased with the deep blue colour of the house.

To terrace or not to terrace?

In parallel with the wastewater treatment decision, Dad is very insistent that we decide right away on the garden layout, and in particular that we put terraces in. I am less sure, not least because I'd never envisaged having terraces nor had it been something we'd discussed.

Much exchange of emails ensued... At one point I had talked myself into terracing, to the extent of having a giant HaHa... but then Dad talked me out of it again. So now we're back to square one, no decision on layout yet made and awaiting input from Michael from Septech on how detailed we need to be in specifying pipe layout.

I can't face summarising it all, so here's the email conversations recorded for posterity. ;-)

On 11th Nov Dad wrote:

I think terracing of the block is essential in order to retain water for garden beds. I believe each terrace can accommodate two rows of appropriate trees, at the high side and the low side. The stepdown of each terrace will give a place for trailing plants and for shrubs. The size of each terrace is dictated by your plans for the area other than as an effluence field. The pipes can be buried beneath the surface if it is more appropriate for the use you intend for the terrace. In fact, you may not want to put in terracing at all. But you need to take time to consider this in the light of needing to direct Michael, and when he proposes his pipes you need to accomodate these adequately. You are the one with the masterplan.

I replied:

In terms of terracing, I don't know yet. There are pros and cons. But at this stage, I don't see that whether we have terraces or whether we have the pipes simply laid on the surface with mulch would make a huge difference to the length of pipes we'd need. I will ask Michael though. For the moment I think we go with whatever layout in that specific area is the simplest for him to quote on, so we can get the plans submitted in order to get the building permit underway. If needed we can then revise the details of piping layout later as they'll remain in the same area so can't see it being a big deal

On 13th Nov Dad replied:

I suspect from your last email that you are not aware that the council health inspector will not permit us to move the field as established by the drainer before commissioning the system without another inspection. That is why I wanted you to consider the size of each of the terraces if terraces were to be used at all. Terraces make the area more efficient for use as a soakage of wastewater area. As the gradient is such that over the distance from the corner post under the master bedroom of the old house to the cornerpost under the kitchen on a diagonal is approximately 1 metre in fall. That translates to about 1m fall in approx 12 m. Since we can curve the terraces to the shape of the hill we can gain a slightly sloping open area with a width of 3m and a step down for each area of about 400mm. The 45m area available would permit 4 such terraces. The field has to be accounted for the minimum of 400m only on the parts where the pipes are going on the level along the length of the terrace. The drop down to the next terrace at either end does not apply to the overall capacity of the system to dispense water.

If you wanted to have only 2 terraces then the stepdown would be approx 1m. That may be more suitable to you. It would mean moving subsoil down to the lower area after scraping off any soil that could be used on the finished terrace. That applies to all terracing of course. The stepdown requires a slope rather than a sheer drop. This takes away from the available width of the area to accommodate the terraces, but a slope is more serviceable in the long run with less maintenance.

As long as you have a clear idea of this information you can make a considered choice about whether to have terraces or not. If you like you can simply distribute the pipes on the existing gradient. You also have the option of having the pipes buried at least 300mm under the ground or lying atop the ground with mulch atop them

I replied:

Yes, I understand we can't move the overall location of the field.. But, if the field is defined as simple a specific area - ie if you imagine we roped out a section of land between the house and the gums at top of driveway, then it may be that provided we stick to keeping the pipes within that specific area, we might have flexibility to change the precise details of pipe arrangement prior to implementation.

It all depends on how detailed Michael has to be in terms of how he describes things. Eg: if he has to describe the location of every single individual pipe and bend, then we wouldn't be able to alter a thing without having another inspection. But if all we need do for the permit is to commit to there being a set length of pipe in total and for it to be arranged over this particular plot of land (but not give details of precisely how the pipes would be arranged within the borders of that plot) then we would still have flexibility to decide the best garden (and thus pipe) layout closer to implementation.

Eg: do the pipes have to be evenly spaced within a given area, or can their arrangement be more finely targeted, so it only goes on those areas that have garden beds and not on the areas that are paths? As an illustration, see:




If we went for a garden layout sort of like this, would we be able to focus the pipes in just the dark green bedding areas? This is what I want to find out from Michael. (nb: this is just one illustration: I would want to liaise with Prue before confirming precise shapes of beds etc, just showing to you so you get the gist of what I am asking).

Of course, it would be possible to still have terracing with this sort of garden although you wouldn't want too many... But, thinking about it more, there is another reason why having at least one terrace would be good - and that is so that we could use it as a Ha-Ha.

In case you don't know what a Ha-Ha is, it is basically an invisible fence. They used them a lot in old country houses here in the UK, as a way to keep sheep and cows out of the formal garden areas without having to build an obvious wall that blocked the view from the house.

I wonder if we could do a form of this encircling at least the bottom parts of the garden which had a HaHa type cliff edge - of a sufficient height to stop sheep/cows/etc. We could use the clay that we have excavated from other areas, supplemented with lovely topsoil that we buy in for the top for planting in - to help build up the height sufficient to give a high enough edge.

This would also solve a problem I have been worried about: how to be able to have a nice garden area without sheep getting into it and having to erect yet another fence. You mentioned if we had 2 terraces the step down would be 1m. So does that mean if we had only one terrace, that the step down at the outside edge would be 2m? This would be big enough to keep out sheep wouldn't it?

What do you think?

Dad replied:

1. A metre fence with a slope to complement it will be adequate. There are not slopes that a sheep or cow will not go up for good tucker, unless we are talking a sheer wall of sleepers or rock.

2. If we have only one terrace it will make a wall about 1.6m to 2m as a rough calculation. This terrace will not be level, most likely, but have a small gradient. Before beginning any excavation I would establish the gradients required to follow by placing markers for the man on the machine, and by frequent checks of gradient points as the excavation continues.

3 .The problem with moving the pipes is that you cannot handle them unless licensed to do so. They are a health hazard as they carry black water to be treated in the ground.

4. However you go about this there is sufficient area to get 400m of pipe in for the dispersal of the water. I would imagine there are guidelines as to how close together the row can be, and this relative to the percolation value of the soil. I am sure they will have it worked out to be certain all water delivered remains under the surface and doesn't seep to the surface because of saturation of the area.

I replied:

Hi Dad,

Re: 1)

We *are* talking about a sheer wall of rock. That is what a Ha-Ha involves.

I just realised I have some photos of a real HaHa that may help explain it better. In fact this is of the oldest HaHa in the world that was installed in the late 1600's and has been keeping out sheep ever since. I saw it with Mum at the Levens Hall garden a few years ago up in Cumbria. This is me standing on the edge of the Levens Hall HaHa with my toes nearly off the edge, taking a photo of the rock retaining wall. See, it's really clever, you can hardly tell there is a wall there even when standing right above it.




And this is the photo I took, looking down. You can see they had pebbles at the bottom and rocks lining the wall side




I like the idea of a HaHa aka an invisible fence from the house side, because I really don't want to have everything looking like it is fenced in. The orchard wall was something that we were forced into and luckily you can't see the wire from the house, but it has spoiled my plans for that part of the garden... kind of hard to stroll through the trees down to the dam when you have to go through giant fencing. But hoping it will be OK in the end because we will grow things on the wall and make it look less like a prison fence encircling them. We had no choice anyway, protecting the trees was the top priority.

Re: 2)

A wall of 1.6 - 2m at it's highest point down near the driveway sounds great - although I want to discuss with Dave too. It would mean that even as we got up the hill towards the house there will still be a reasonable sized drop quite a way around. So it would only be near the house that we had to worry about having a low height fence.

We could have one small part where there were steps and a gate in the wall to allow you to walk up through the garden from the driveway.

Re: 3)

Of course I understand we can't move the pipes once they have been laid. But there is a long long time before a single pipe will go near the place. To spell it out more clearly, this is my understanding of the timing.

Dec 2008: Michael creates application including plan (to whatever level of detail is required)
Jan 2009: Dad gets building permit to start work on the old house
Sometime in 2011 or even 2012: We actually get round laying the pipes.

There is a lot of time between now and when the pipes need to be put on the ground. All I am saying is that why commit now to a detailed layout of exactly where each individual pipe will go, where it will bend, etc if we still have years to go before it will be implemented? The *only* reason to commit so early would be if the council required that level of detail for the permit, but that is for Michael to tell us.

Of course: the one thing I need to check in having just a single big terrace - which can't do until on site and can see the gradients - is whether having such a terrace would mean you couldn't see the dam from the house. I'm hoping not, am hoping that the slope is such that you would still be able to look down and see it, that the only parts that may be hidden are the driveway and part of the orchard...

Dad replied:

I did not say the wall was to be down near the driveway, but I referred to a terrace created by removing soil and subsoil layers to whatever size you wanted within the 45x45 area. The thought I had was that the terrace would ultimately regain the original level of the ground near the trees. I never thought you wanted to dig below the level of the trees to create a trench. Doing this may compromise the runoff prospect from the saturation field. You cannot go closer than the front of the house with any diggings because of the underground pipeline restrictions, so to manage a trench to runoff would have to be arranged in the other direction,across the road and thereby require a bridge of sorts.....I thought you would use the extra soil from the house excavation and from small terraces to build up a roadway between the trees. The idea of a Ha Ha for the wastewater area is going to greatly restrict the area available for pipes. I was talking about a wall or slope at the high side of the wastewater field. The vegetation of this field cannot be fruit trees or vegetables. Nothing that will be consumed. The area you have bending up towards the house is where the septic has to be put. This cannot be too far from the houses nor be too low as a very low gradient for the septic inflow pipes from bathroom and other area is required (apx 40/1 if it hasn't changed since I last laid such pipes). The tank could go under the area for the herb garden in your sketch, but must be not directly under as access needs to be readily available for service. A large terrace may require another percolation test as the test had only 600mm holes into the undisturbed terrain of the area. I think Michael's input is required before too much more detail is added to the area.

update from Dad

Dad writes to tell of his plans for later this month, focusing on watering. It is coming into the hot season there...

Email from Dad (2nd Nov)

In three weeks time I have two days together, a Sat/Sun scenario, so will go up to Amherst.

I will pump 1000gal into the tank for irrigation as a drip to all the trees over as long as it takes for the tank to empty. Each of the trees has a pipe with a valve that is a gate valve, a very important point for a drip system because the pressure does not affect the leakage from the valve as in the tapwasher type valve used in high pressure systems. I will only be watering the fruit trees in this way.

As well I will thoroughly drench the trees while there working on other tasks. I will pump water from the dam while watering full bore all the trees and only leave when all the trees are well watered, and there is a full tank for using as a slow drip to the trees in the ensuing period until I can return. I envision it would take about a month for a slowly dripping system to empty the tank. I aim to encourage the trees to seek deep water by this method, and feel the lesson learned by not watering the lemon gum trees during the drought will apply here as well. There seems to always be water deep down in the clay areas.

I will mow the olive grove and the orchard as well while there.

fake lawn becoming more popular

It seems like at last fake grass is starting to catch on in Australia - see extracts from article below.

I suspect we are going to have to go down this route at least in part so I don't go nuts from lack of greenery. Fake is better than nothing!

I reckon too it could also be a really practical lower-maintenance alternative to gravel or cobbles for the pathways between garden beds...


Extracts from "Which Grass is Greener?" (November 4, 2008)


Frustrated at seeing their once green lawns turn to parched, dusty hollows because of the watering ban, many people are weighing up the choices: is synthetic turf that you don't have to water kind to the environment or are drought tolerant grasses the way to go?

Peter Ammoun, of Lifestyle Turf, says demand has never been higher for his artificial turf, with this winter "the best ever".

"When we first started, the requests were in summer and for smaller courtyards and little shady areas," he says. "The average size was about 35 square metres, but that has doubled and people are doing their front and back gardens and around swimming pools, plus nature strips." ...


While sales of artificial turf have increased, demand for the real thing is still high, according to HG Turf's Peter van Leeuwen. He concedes that synthetic turf is more practical because there's no need for watering or mowing, but it doesn't have the same feel underfoot as natural turf, which is softer and more cooling...

"A lot of drought-hardy warm season grasses are available and, once established, require little water," van Leeuwen says. Instead, drought-tolerant, warm season grasses such as soft-leafed buffaloes are being grown including Sir Walter, sapphire and palmetto.

Kikuyu, used at Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens in heavy traffic areas, and couch are also viable alternatives. However, like buffalo, they brown off (already there are signs of lawns under stress after two dry months) but they bounce back after rain or being refreshed with grey water...

The cost of natural turf and its synthetic counterparts vary greatly, with real grass costing $7-$10 a square metre and artificial turf, fully installed, $80-$90 (depending on the quality and supplier). If you choose to do it yourself, the cost is about $35 a square metre.

update on trees

Dad recently did a trip up to Amherst to fix the irrigation for the new orchard trees. While there he took photos, here's a few:





In Dad's words:

These were taken when I went there to install small watering pots to the new plants, and check progress of olives. Only 3/4 of a tank of water has rained since transferring water to the large tank. I will pump the irrigation tank full next time I go and water the entire orchard. I will also install a drip attachment to all the small watering points for the orchard and allow the full tank to slowly drip into these tree pipes. That should help them through the dry season.

Edna Walling's "Bickleigh Vale"

A few years back when researching herbaceous borders, I wrote about Edna Walling, an Australian garden designer from the 1920-50's who was like Australia's version of Gertrude Jekyll. (See here and scroll down about halfway for the section about Edna)

Well, there was an 8 minute feature about her on last week's "Gardening Australia" TV show that Mum kindly told me about, and you can watch it for free on the ABC website here: Link to ABC website

Because I'm not sure how long the ABC will leave it accessible, I also created my own copy that you can access below. Please try watching at the ABC link first though: not only will you be able to view it all in one go, it'll help to save my bandwidth allowance! :-) Plus they have lots of other good stuff that you can browse while you're there...

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:

Lovely views

Dave sadly didn't take many photos while he was there but I forgive him: as he said, he was working! (And there's a reason that it's usually me wielding the camera...)

But besides the photos of the fence and house showing their progress, he did get a smattering of scenic views. It's these more than anything which remind me of why we're planning to move there.

View from the hill near olives:





Early morning at the dam:

Dave's visit

Dave got back yesterday, at last. Here's his short summary of what they did each day along with a few photos:

Monday 4th August
rained all way up, got there 2pm, built shelter


(this photo was taken a few days later obviously, given the blue skies!)

Tuesday 5th August
cold morning, started to strip back panels on side wall, forest side



Wednesday 6th August
primer coat on stripped wall, continued stripping. Planted lemon tree, blood orange, almond, pecan.





Thursday 7th August
painted first coat on side wall, built scaffold for work on dam side wall.





Friday 8th August
more painting and stripping, 5,000 gal tank arrived and installed. drove back to Melbourne in the late afternoon.



Saturday 9th August
rest day in Melbourne

Sunday 10th August
drove back to Amherst in the morning, arrived early afternoon. started initial work on olive fence, put 5 posts in



Monday 11th August
more painting and stripping. forest side finished, dam side half stripped. another 10 posts in



Tuesday 12th August
30 posts put in am, primer coat done dam side all other posts in.



Wednesday 13th August
first blue coat on dam side, holes dug for fences round almond and chestnut trees.



Thursday 14th August
second blue coat, started completing fence with first run of wire



Friday 15th August
wiring up fence. finished first run, started top layer.

Saturday 16th August
finished second run of wire (upper) started fences for trees

Sunday 17th August
ran hare fence around olive trees

progress on the shelter shed

Dad has made more progress on the shelter he's building , that we suspect will one day serve as a barn.

3 more of the trusses are up now - I still can't get over how he's managed to do all this singlehandedly.




Via email 12th July:
I had to abort the plans to work on my shed because of bad weather so hired the dingo to use my time well once there. I had gone up without a trailer, met with snow near Ballarat and lots of rain, so turned around and went back to get the dingo. (nb: this was to dig post holes to enclose the olive grove: a project he will do with Dave in a few weeks)... I made the new track to the hobbit house below the perimeter of the olive grove and will drive there and create a safe road, although it is a little sloped in places. Once there are no longer building projects there it can lapse back to grass and be a walking track.


Via email 20th July:
I am sending some photos of my near completion of the shed frame. I could go no further this trip because of time and because my arms would not permit more lifting of the heavy planks at the end of the day. I have the battens ready for iron on one side, but must remove the two fascia beams for attachment to the ends of the rafters either end. These were needed to walk on while framing. I must lower all the planks again, and install them on the outside for fitting the fascia beams. I have stretched the span to the limit of all members, but it is a very sturdy structure nonetheless. The posts are on stirrups in concrete, bolted to the ribbon plates at top and the end trusses are resting on saddles cut into the top of the corner posts. Two opposing strap braces are fitted as well.

If I have enough old iron I will complete both sides of the roof, but if not only the downhill side so this area can be Dave's lounging area. I will put the small caravan on the downhill side leaving room only for parking a car where you see the Jackaroo, only closer to the posts. I will put a small tank uphill to catch the runoff and provide bath water. We can cart the water from the tanks near the old house for now and transfer to the standing tanks.

This uses 4 of the trusses, and there are 6 remaining. This accommodates 2 vehicles easily, but using 6 trusses will accommodate 4 vehicles. I will discuss with Dave if you and he can decide where you might like such a structure. If built down on the flat near the container it is good for neighbor supervision, but a long way from where you ought to have if for maximum utility. I think probably up where the drive ends in the turnaround, but to the side of the track I drive to go to the hobbit house now. I think it important that track look and feel graceful just as your driveway with trees looks.

idea for a shower

I found this on Ebay. It's too expensive (and too far away) to bid on, but wanted to make a note of it as perhaps we can build our own. It'd make a great outdoor shower, as well as a way to make sure you didn't use too much water.



It's an old (1810) portable watersaver shower. You apparently pumped water up to the top using something like an old tyre pump. Then you had your shower and the water collected in the bottom where you could pump it back up again.

Soil test results

Yes, they have finally arrived. Here's the key extracts:



(Click to make it big enough to read).

Also, here's the background information leaflet.

building a shelter

Dad has been spending free time working on a side project at Amherst: building a shelter using the roof trusses he salvaged.

I'm not sure quite what it will end up being like - eg: whether it will have any sides enclosed - but it's already starting to look nice, and huge!



Dad is planning to put the small caravan under it for protection, as well as setting up a woodheater for warmth. That'll be where Dave stays during the 2 weeks he's there in early August. Positioning a tank on one edge he'll be able to use the roof to collect water, which will then be used to rig up a rudimentary outdoor shower.

These photos give you an indication of not only what it will look like, but also how amazingly improvisational my Dad is. He's managed to build this entire thing with huge heavy trusses 10ft in the air single-handedly.



In Dad's words:

(via email 30th May):
I am pleased to have succeeded in getting the 8 stirrups into the concrete in the right places so the next fortnight weekend that I go up I can erect the pine poles atop these, and put the long beams in place. I will need to make braces for the pole walls which at either end support the trusses. Then I will need batten materials for the iron roof. I have some up there, and will use all my own stuff first, stuff which I took there long ago for the hobbithouse. I have enough scavenged western red cedar weatherboards to box in the two ends of the truss roof. And I have enough secondhand iron to complete the roof, I think.

(via email 22nd June):
I have plans to go up for another working day next weekend, and spent today loading tressles, planks, and extra pipes with more ladders. I could not proceed last weekend because of being too short of ladders to work safely at any height. I must totally anchor the first truss before I can move the towers to the next set of posts. I then erect the two posts and connect them temporarily to the first truss with battens. I then move to the third set of posts, and so on until all four trusses are erect on their posts and then connnect all with battens both beneath the ends of the trusses and above. I then put on braces and ensure all is square so when I put on the sheets it works well. I am lucky I have the extra truss that is hanging upside down as a stablizer and connector for the two posts so they can be held in a plumb status. I then put bolts through the connecting points and it will withstand high winds and be safe.

Ebay win: fence spears

We just won a bulk lot of these. I've seen similar before but there hasn't been enough of them or else they were just too expensive / too much hassle to arrange delivery. These were only 20 minutes from my sister's and the seller kindly agreed to drop them off.



From the description:
A bulk lot of 95 cast iron Victorian Pallisade fencing spearheads. 120mm long, 75mm wide, 21x17mm stub to suit 25mm RHS. New, never been used, although some are a bit rusty. Great for repairs or extensions to original or reproduction fencing

Not sure precisely how we'll use them yet, but one idea is on a fence to enclose parts of the garden near the house. It wouldn't keep out kangaroos, but they're unlikely to come close to the house anyway, but it would work for sheep.

The rough concept would be to get some old metal rods, like the kind they use in foundations (ie: cheap) which we'd then attach these spears too, spraypaint black, and voila a fancy-ish fencepost. If we spaced them eg: a spearpost every metre with wire in between, Dave reckons we'd be able to cover an area 20m x 20m square which is a reasonable size.

Keeping bees

Sometimes things just all fall into place.

We plan to keep bees at Amherst to help with pollinating the orchard as well as for honey and beeswax.

But neither of us know the first thing about bee-keeping.

I'd been expecting it would be a hassle to find somewhere local to learn and thus we'd be better starting over here in the UK despite the climate and bee strain differences. But it turns out that couldn't be further from the truth.

The Central Goldfields region of which we're smack bang in the middle is apparently a centre for the Honey Bee industry in Australia!!!! Who knew???

Because of this, the local TAFE has multiple courses all about bee keeping. The one that sounds perfect for us is a 7 week course, 1 evening per week plus 2 weekend day practical sessions.

So bees can wait. Thank goodness, 'cos I wasn't looking forward to attempting it here in urban London. :-)

soil test update

We're still waiting for the full set of test results, but we've heard about the Foundation test.

From Dad's email (May 1st):
"He said he has done one of the tests, the foundations, and the news is good, an M classification for the footings. He has to complete the capability tests, as these require time for dispersal of water from holes before he can submit his samples"

I had a little hunt online and found a booklet thanks to Soil Test Australia which defines the different classifications. It turns out M = average. :-)



UPDATE: the full report has arrived.

water bottles for trees

Both Dave and my birthdays are coming up in April, and Mum asked what present we wanted. So, I immediately thought of Amherst and suggested a lemon tree for the orchard.

But of course, lemon trees need a lot of water, far more than the others in the orchard. So I came up with an ingenious solution. Why not give any ultra-thirsty trees their own little water butts set on a drip feed going right under the soil? It wouldn't be lost to evaporation that way and they'd be able to have as much water as they wanted then provided the water butts were big enough.

I looked on Ebay and - tada - the perfect solution. Old olive barrels already fitted up with taps and in a fetching terracotta colour that won't look too out of place:



This is the description from Ebay:

This 190L Rainwater/Greywater barrel has a brand new 1/2 inch garden tap fitted. It is ideal to store water for the garden. It features an open top 2 piece lid . The lid has a hole in the centre and it and comes with a sink plug to stop the mozzies from getting in. In a former life this drum held olives and I have rinsed and leak tested it. The drum after rinsing retains a slight smell of olives but this will go in time.

During Melbourne's recent rain, using these type of drum/ tanks I caught 700 litres of water off a 6m x 4m shed. I then used the water to wash clothes and used the greywater to water the garden. This drum could also be used to catch the water dripping from your air conditioner or you could catch the overflow from your rainwater tank.

Tank Size approx 900 x 550mm.
Lid size 320mm diameter

We bought three of them and Mum liked them so much she bought two more for herself. I plan to just prop them up on bricks next to each tree that needs extra cosseting, they'll look quite cute. :-)

Rescuing the olives

What with all the attention focused on the orchard, the poor olive trees planted up on the hill got neglected. The enclosures were broken into by next door's sheep and escaped deer, and many trees were eaten or at least severely squashed. :-(



Dad very kindly made an emergency trip to make repairs so hopefully they'll bounce back. Ultimately though I think we're going to have to invest in a big fence for them too like the orchard. *sigh* Here's an example of a repaired enclosure:



And here's what we can expect to have lots of, one day. :-) Despite everything, we have fruit on a couple... so it's not all bad.




Just for the sake of future records (not that I suspect anyone but me will ever be interested) here's the saga in full as described by Dad:

On Feb 14th Dad emailed:

"Watered orchard. Found great damage to olive grove. 12 trees nearly destroyed by roos or sheep. Broken down barriers. Must go next week to repair and replace all tree barriers".

On Feb 21st Dad he did as promised and wrote back with an update:

"I got home at 0200 this morning after spending the past two days to save the olive grove. I understand from talking to your new neighbor down the hill that there have been deer on the block only last week...

I set about to replace the damaged plastic pickets with new ones, using 4 each tree not just 3 pickets as it is apparent that the trees get much more protection from would-be grazers with 4. I acquired all the now unneeded pickets from the orchard, having considerable trouble to extract them until I figured a way to use a chain and pin in a hole to grip them to pull with the picket-extractor... (Overall I regret buying the plastic ones, but at the time it seemed the best thing.... They are still the best for safety around stock, especially horses... but on your block will always need to drive a pilot hole first with a steel picket, extract it and then drive the plastic: time-consuming and frustrating but the only effective way to get the penetration in your soil type)

I was able to gather only half enough plastic pickets to do all repairs from the orchard, and began my work of repair. After finding it took nearly an hour each tree... I took the decision to use the 50 new steel pickets bought for Tex to fix the fence. I gathered all steel pickets we had on the block about 10, and ultimately extracted 18 of my steel stakes from around the hobbithole site. In the end I had just enough to do all repairs on all the trees as needed. There were only 4 tree enclosures which did not need to be replaced urgently since these were in satisfactory condition if I only beefed up the fixing. So I finished at dark yesterday, 830pm feeling as knackered as Dave felt the day he made the first enclosures.

I posted the pics of the tree damage (typical), the plastic post replacement, the all steel post replacement, the wiring clipped to strengthen top, and some pics of the little olives which demonstrates that your grove is ready to produce if only the animals can be kept away. I think the chief damage is from hares (from below) so I redid all wire wraps with apx 6 inch of fold along the ground. I also strengthened the overall by clipping nearly all the holes in the pickets to the wire instead of only top and bottom holes. The use of 4 pickets allows further distance from the wire for the centre of the tree. On all the trees cropped to the ground there are new leaf buds forming. I judge none of these trees will die. One of the trees damaged in the first year subsequently die even though the wire was fixed. So you have only 1 fatality to date, but if I had not acted promptly this time I fear most of the grove would have been destroyed. We are quite lucky I took a stroll up the hill when watering last weekend so noticed the damage soon after the attack and had time to go within a very short time".

our first peaches

peaches
Originally uploaded by lynetter

The first ever fruit from the orchard, picked by Dad and Vida 2 days ago. There was also apparently another peach that had ripened already and fallen - they ate it up there and Vida said it was very sweet.

Seeing this is so wonderful as brings us one step closer... although growing 8 peaches successfully is still a long way from self-sufficiency, but hey it's a start... :-)

You can see these same peaches growing on the tree barely a month ago here.

our new garden edging

A few weeks ago we did a little Ebay splurge and bought some reclaimed edging tiles from a Gloucestershire manor house.

They're ultimately destined for the garden at Amherst, but in the meantime I'm using them here. They make a much nicer edging for around the chicken run don't you think?



(PS: you can see no chickens as this photo was taken at dusk - they'd taken themselves to bed!)

We also had far more than I expected, which is brilliant. Here are all the leftovers that I need to figure out how to use:



Gosh we're going to have a fun time scrubbing the dirt off them when it's time to send home. *sigh* Still, it will definitely be worth it. :-)

We have peaches!

Wow wow wow.



I would never have dreamed we'd have fruit already - considering how last year we were happy just to see the trees had some leaves, given they were getting constantly nibbled at and constrained by the wire. Dad was so right about putting in the fence.

Here's the same tree from a distance. A very happy tree I think. :-)



(Notice too in the distance there are trees. They are the gums lining the driveway that are huge! More on them in a sec)

Here's a few other tree shots. I'm just so happy that we have some that are thriving.

Orchard fence is finished

Well, almost finished. It only has a temporary gate at the moment, but close enough as it'll probably be years before we get something permanent.

Here you can see the fence clearly, and also how we've interspersed old tree trunks with the poles.


The old trees were from some that had long-ago fallen on our property. They're Ironbark which is incredibly strong (hence the name) so they're not going to rot away anytime soon. The posts need painting perhaps to make them match the trunks, but overall I like the effect... I think it'll be even better when I get creepers growing over some of the poles, etc.

Up close the trunks have a lovely pattern:



The other thing I like about the fence is that from a distance the wire fades into the background (at least when it isn't wrapped in shadecloth):



I was so worried that having the fence would make it feel like a compound but it doesn't. When the fruit trees grow big it'll be even less noticeable.

Orchard fence is halfway there

We've prioritised getting the orchard fence built so that it was done in time for Spring, when the trees put on their biggest spurt of growth. Let's hope it makes a difference.

As a reminder, here's what we planned.

Dad has now got the poles in, including some fabulous dead tree ones! I wish we had more dead tree ones but it's OK, we shall work with what we have - it's going to look better than I hoped I think.

A birds eye view

Dave discovered that Google Earth had recently added new photos at much higher resolution covering Amherst. You can see the trees we planted!!!

Here's a close-up for the house and garden area. This is my favourite view. I love how not only can you see the trees, but also the outline of the walled garden area, right down to our first start at making vegie garden beds. From this view I can see we've got the sizing right relative to the house + the placement... it was so hard to judge at ground level.


Here's a view covering the entire property:


It's a little deceptive as it makes it look flat whereas in reality it's on a kind of rolling hill.

Finally, here's a close up of the far side, where you can see the baby olive trees.

trusses for shed

Dad got some great trusses. He's going to use them to make a temporary shelter for building materials he needs to clear out from his backyard. The picture of the random carport shows how he's thinking it will look.

photos of trees

Poor Dad. I am always pestering him to take photos when he visits. I just love seeing how it's changed and having the photos also makes me feel like I'm there. Here's a couple of shots from Dad's recent visit:

From Dad's email on September 24th
The dam is half full. The gums are very large now, some 2.5metre and growing++.

pine posts and wire for orchard

Dad has done another of his miraculous sourcing tricks. Somehow he managed to find someone who was dismantling their orchard and selling off a bunch of pine poles that are perfect for what we need:

From Dad's email on September 19th:
I am going to Amherst with the loaded trailer of 160-180mm pine posts 3 metre long. Had to go to near Arthur's Seat chairlift to get them. They are excellent and only $10 each. The next size down, 125mm, cost $25 each. These are an exceptional bargain and we ought to buy as many as you envision you will need. He also has 125mm ones both in the 3m and 2.4 m and some 2.4m that are 180-200 that would be excellent for strainer posts. Your call if you want to invest more. He runs an orchard that he is downsizing. He has about 1000 poles that are 9 yrs old but in excellent, and I mean excellent order. Better than new because they have better preservative in them than is presently being used.

Dad ended up getting another load's worth in the end I think, as they're such a good deal and will come in handy for so many projects.




In terms of the wire, Dad said:
I cannot get discounted dog wire so will go with 1.2 m high weldmesh for the bottom that has square gaps of 10cmx10cm. You need 3 rolls at $54 each, plus staples. You have the single strand wire already to make up the top of the fence up to the 2.4, or you can tell me to buy an additional 3 rolls of the weldmesh and make it all weldmesh.

I replied to say to use the same weld mesh wire along the whole fence and also to make sure it was lined up with the wire below if it was going on in two parts.
"What I mean is, make it symmetrical if you can as otherwise I think it might look a little odd to the eye when you're looking up close to see the 'stripes' of the wire that don't match up. If this isn't possible then please leave a gap, say 20-30cm, between the two sheets of wire so they look clearly separate... I'm assuming a small gap like this, 1.2m off the ground, is not going to be possible for any sheep/roo to squeeze through as they're not climbers"

designing the orchard fence

The poor fruit trees need better protection. No sooner do they send shoots up than they get nibbled off by a passing sheep or kangaroo. The wire fencing doesn't seem to have worked as well for them as the gum trees, so they're surviving - but barely.

Dad reckons, and Dave agrees, that the only thing to do is put in a proper fence.

But I've been hesitant to do so, because I was worried it would spoil the feeling of open-ness and views through to the dam.

There's no alternative however, so after much deliberation we've come up with an idea.

The 'functional' goal is to keep the sheep and roos out, but make it possible still for smaller animals, like rabbits, to get inside and eat the grass to save us mowing. The 'design' goal is to make it look nice, perhaps even sculptural, not like a traditional fence and with minimal impact on the views.

Depending on price, we're hoping to use the kind of wire that has square holes, about 15cm x 15cm. It's strong enough to repel sheep, we can use tent pegs to fasten to the ground between pillars, and viewed from a distance you'd hopefully not notice it.

The question however, is what kind of posts to use to hold the wire up.

My first idea was to make it sort of mediterranean in feel... to make the fence posts like round pillars, and put planters for cacti and succulents on top. The concept was that we could sprinkle them through the orchard and that they'd appear to have a reason for being there - almost as if they were sculptures - beyond just holding up a fence.



But, when I tried to envisage this while there, I realised it wouldn't work... it didn't have the right feel. So Mum and I came up with an alternative.

We'll make it one big fenced area around the orchard - but in a curved shape that feels natural to walk around and to fit in with the shape of the driveway. I had a go at marking it out using bricks, but suspect it'll evolve as I wasn't sure how much space needed to be between each post.
We'll use normal fence posts (ideally round, unless rectangular is a lot cheaper) with the idea being that ultimately we can paint them - perhaps in the dark blue of the house, with a gold 'finial' like detail at the top. Whatever paint style we choose, it can be a recurring motif throughout other garden features and help to pull it all together. To give you an idea of how the painted fence posts might feel, here's an example from a garden we visited in Olinda (ours of course would be much taller and with wire between):



To make it even more interesting and less 'fence-like', we could perhaps have every 5th or so post being not a post but a 'dead tree'. If we buy some uncut big branches from the local sawmill, ideally in different shapes with a few other branches coming off at the top, then they could be set into position almost as if they were the trunks of real skeleton trees. It'd give it a more natural feel and blend in with the gums of the driveway, and I could put pots and hanging planters in the branches perhaps. Hmmm... here's a sketch of the idea:



Of course, there are a few trees that are just too far out to be included in the main fenced bit. I'm envisioning that each of the mulberry and almond trees will have their own enclosures. For simplicity they could be rectangular, but the way they're lined up needs consideration. Mum and I toyed with a couple of ideas (aligning them with the walled garden; making them point to the dam) but in reality I think the best alignment will only become obvious a the point of building, as it'll need to fit in with the house, the drive, the slope of the land etc, so am not going to fuss too much about it for now.

a sad lesson learned...

In October we planted a few things without any protection from sheep, to test out how they'd do.

Sadly the news is not good.

There is no sign of the reeds. Nor did the waterlily survive - but then, after the disasters of attempting to plant it, that's not surprising.

There is only the slimmest of signs of the 'pigface' cuttings. So slight that it might be just a weed, but I found where I planted it and there is a very small shoot coming up that might, just might, be it attempting to re-grow. It was too small though even to show up on a photo, so I suspect realistically it's gone. :-(

Even the agaves are struggling. The b*****d sheep ate them, spikes and all! Well, they didn't have big spikes as they were little, but still... Dave reckons that one agave survived unscathed behind the house, but I searched and couldn't find any sign of it. However I did find the two that were at the front of the house. Both are eaten to the bone - but they're still green so fingers crossed they'll revive. One even seems to have sent out an offshoot.

What a difference a week makes...

... well, actually 2 weeks, during which time there were several days with solid rain.

I've just got back from a very fleeting trip to Australia for a friend's wedding, and managed to squeeze in 2 hours at Amherst en-route to the airport. To my amazement, it was green! It's such a relief to see how quickly it greens up; to have a reminder that it's not always dusty and drab.

The lemongum trees are doing magnificently. You're starting to be able to get the effect of them lining the driveway now.




The dam has filled up quite a bit - the ridge is still visible but closing over at one end.


Unfortunately the orchard isn't doing so well (more on that soon) but just look at the green!


Here's a short clip combining images with some panoramic videos to show more:


Music thanks to Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Mum's visit to Wigandia garden

A short while ago I wrote about Wigandia garden. This is a famous Australian garden, renowned for being extremely drought tolerant, low maintenance and with its own unique style. You can see the garden's website here.

Well, thanks to the garden creator William posting a comment (thanks!) I discovered that the garden was opened to the public for the first time in years over Easter.

Unfortunately I couldn't go myself, what with being on the other side of the world, but I convinced Mum to go in my stead. It was a very long day for her, around 4 hours drive each way(!) but I think she enjoyed it, and she did an amazing job of taking photos and video.

In Mum's words:
"It was all a surprise – I had not expected it to look so good. And his sculptures would be, anywhere else, just a heap of old junk like the rusty decrepit bike thrown on a heap of sort of garden rubbish. It looked just perfect – a guy there (another visitor) and I both commented it would look like waiting for the rubbish collection in our places, but was so exactly right where he had placed it! I think it was one of the volunteers who told me he had given it a LITTLE water to make it really nice for Easter, since about Christmas. that is, probably the bathwater to cover an acre or so! "

I've put the full set of Mum's photos up on Flickr here. As well, to give you a flavour of the garden, below is a short video compilation showing one side, plus a couple of photos.


Music thanks to Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)







Based on the photos, the garden is amazing. The fact that it's so full of life, at the tail end of a long hot summer and drought, is phenomenal. Yes, I imagine it'd be prettier still in late autumn after some rain, but it's easy to make a garden look lovely when it's lush and green - what's hard is what this garden succeeds at - to look wonderful even when it's dry and overbearingly hot. It's also clearly a garden for wildlife, with the various drinking bowls for birds and all the butterflies. Just wonderful. I hope I get a chance to visit it myself in person one day.

update on trees

Not much has been happening at Amherst over the past little while. Dad has been busy studying for his nursing exam and working on his own house. Here's an update from Mum on a recent trip:

"Dad went up to your place Thursday night with Dakota and Lady, the trailer and the ute. I went up Friday and brought him and the dogs back in the afternoon. I was late arriving – traffic was dreadful. Dad wanted to look at the terrain a bit south of Ballarat so we drove back that way, and rejoined the freeway at Ballan.

The grass at Amherst on your land seems to have been mowed. Almost bowling green short and smooth! And there was a definite green tinge over everything that I was not expecting. Dad went to water the fruit trees and found water standing in the trenches he had dug round them, like mini dams, one per tree. Tex said they had about 100mm overnight a couple of weeks back – I think it was the night I told you it was raining up your way. It looks lovely, but there is not much feed about for sheep...

The gums along the drive are either flourishing or dead, and there are far more flourishing than dead for sure. No more have died since you were there I think. Fine healthy trees they are, and outgrowing their wire protections which is hampering their growth."

articles about swimming ponds

This is something I have thought about for a while, ever since first coming across the concept. I really don't like 'normal' swimming pools, they just look fake and require too much maintenance. But it is going to be so hot there that having somewhere to go for a dip would be good.

A natural pool, aka a swimming pond, seems like it would be a good solution. My only concerns are 1) if it was natural would that mean we risk snakes going into it (my pet horror), and 2) would not the natural appearance be spoiled by the legal requirement to have a fence around it? Or perhaps it would be spared that, by virtue of not being an official swimming pool, like dams are spared.

I have toyed with the idea of it being dug into the hillside, in the space where there's a kind of mini hollow, just down from the olive trees. It would have lovely views there and, if fencing were required, the ground is steep enough that perhaps we could have the fence out view when you're in the pond.

Obviously, this is a luxury so not something we'd rush into, but still worth thinking over.

Here are a couple of articles about it, and I'll add more as I find them.

Take a swim on the wild side - The Garden, July 2005



Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6


Swimming ponds - The Garden, May 2004



(This is part of my slightly insane project to 'file' potentially useful articles that I read, so I have a chance of finding them in future)

in search of artificial lawn

This is a picture of the banks of our dam that Dad took a few weeks ago. It's drier than I've ever seen, you can not only see the hump in the middle, it's now a path big enough to walk over! It really rams home that water is going to have to be very carefully allocated in the garden.




Lawn uses a lot of water but, as we discovered when visiting Beth Chatto's garden, it makes a huge difference to the look and feel of a place. Beth's "dry garden" is OK but it doesn't come close to my garden dream. To really shine, the garden beds need the the green lawn as backdrop.

Except perhaps for a tiny patch in the "secret garden", we're not going to have enough water to support real lawn. Even the drought resistant stuff you can get in Australia needs watering every 2-3 weeks. If you don't it goes brown... ok, it springs back to green-ness as soon as you water it again but what's the point, if it's brown you may as well have gravel. Besides, there's something miserable about the hardy grasses - they feel rough when you walk on them with barefeet, to me they're not a proper lawn.

Which leaves artificial lawn as the only alternative.

We looked at this a few years back and, at least then, there didn't seem to be any decent suppliers in Australia - at least not servicing the domestic market. Now though we've come across a few, and Dave has emailed them to find out more.

Here are the suppliers we've found so far:
http://www.protechcorp.com.au/
http://www.artificialgrass.com.au/
http://www.tigerturf.com.au/
http://www.evergreensyntheticgrass.com.au/

Below are the questions Dave sent to each... I shall post an update with their replies. Fingers crossed. :-)

1. How real does your fake lawn feel and look? eg: If you walk on it barefoot could you tell the difference between it and real grass? If you fall over on it does it give you abrasions/burn like the old style astroturfs do? Is it possible to obtain a sample of the product?

2. Not that we are likely to need to do it often, but once the lawn is laid, if you needed to get to the ground underneath it is it possible to roll it up and re-install it later? This is a consideration because part of the area we'd like to cover has an underground gas main easement which we are not allowed to build over. As well, we are probably going to be installing various underground tanks for sewerage treatment, etc and if they could be underneath the lawn that would give us a lot more flexibility in placement.

3. To what extent is the product fireproof? If for example, a bushfire came through, would the fake grass act as a stimulant or retardant to the fire? Our property is bordered on one side by ironbark forest and so bushfire is a serious hazard we need to consider. On a smaller scale, what would happen if someone dropped a lit cigarette? If a small part was burnt, is it possible to patch?

4. Is it possible to use the fake lawn as a surface for collecting rainwater? We are going to be seeking to capture and store as much water as we can, given it's such a dry area. The lawn would be almost entirely in an area with a gentle slope, so there will be a natural path for runoff.

5. Finally, the question of price. I would be looking at 250-300 square metres coverage, though not in a square block, the grass would be going around garden beds, trees, etc. Can you give a ball park estimate of likely cost? Are there ways to minimise cost, eg: by doing the preparatory legwork and installation myself?

Xmas tree watering

Dad made one last watering trip up to Amherst a few days before Christmas. Here's some photos from that visit. What is amazing about it is just how dry it is, this is the driest I've seen it. Note the tree in the first photo. It now looks miles away from the water edge... well, when we planted it, it was only about 2 metres out.

watering trees and firefighting

I don't know what we would do without Dad helping out at Amherst, especially with watering. We'd hoped that this year it wouldn't have been necessary to make so many trips, but as it's so dry and the fruit trees still so young, he's had to go still every few weeks. At least it's only the orchard needing watering now, we've not been giving any to the gum trees or olives anymore.

Below are accounts of his recent watering trip and some local news - Dad has met the guy who will soon be our new neighbour. He is Tex's son-in-law and building on the site just near our dam opposite Tex's place. He's a professional firefighter and so Dad has donated some equipment to help set up for protecting our place. Hopefully Dave will get a chance to meet him in March.

________________________________________________

FROM DAD'S EMAIL - DECEMBER 8TH

I have plans to go on Monday to water the fruit trees as there has not been rain for this past month... i plan to pump from the dam for the day, and to take extra hay there. To fill in time while the trees are being watered, I plan to wheelbarrow loads of manure and place these about the fruittrees outside the area protected by the wire, and between the trees as well. Enriching the ground there will help the trees and the manure is old and not too hot. I will pile some on top, but not too much so as to burn the trees.

Tell me if this is not what you want, but if I don't hear at all from you, I will use the pile of manure in this way as it is not going to be enriching the soil where it is right now. It may be that working the soil around the trees would encourage water absorption and allow the manure to settle into the ground well and make it's contribution.

I will make one more trip after Monday to water, but briefly only as I will leave the tank full and not need to pump next trip, before I go to Lithuania at the end of December, unless we get very good rains. I realize it is costly to get this foothold with the orchard during these early years, but think what blessing they will be when up and running well. I will talk to you some time about putting an inexpensive wire fence around this little orchard and placing the netting on this fence and so let the trees spread out a little. We need not fear the sheep will get in, and built properly the roos will be kept out as well. It is a small orchard so a close fence will be not too dear".

________________________________________________

FROM DAD'S EMAIL - DECEMBER 11TH


I have had difficulties to water at Amherst. The dam was too dried up to pump from the place where I usually do so I had to totally redo the pumping situation and moved to the part of the dam where the water was over knee height, that portion nearest to the road.

There were no sheep on the property. Roos ate top only of another tree where I'd not reinforced the wiring protection, but tree is doing well otherwise.

Some good news though with regards to the trees: The trees that had been stripped last time have fully recovered and are well leafed, albeit all along their trunk as new little limbs are not yet grown. Also I discovered that one agave was still growing up near the olives.

While there, I watered well as before and placed more straw, but could not obtain bales of straw at nursery, only expensive chopped stuff so only took for the two trees which I had to replace from the last destruction. Am so pleased with growth.

The trees where there's no shadecloth in place (the ones along the road directly up to the house) are but slender poles so will need shadecloth at the next next opportunity. I will talk to you later about what must be done to do justice to this present orchard. So much has been done now that it would be stupid to just let them die now or to merely grow as stunted trees in the himalayas.

I talked to Tex about the drought. He has enough potable water to see him through, but stock is suffering. He will be butchering most of his flock. His son-in-law was just back from firefighting in Gippsland. He is a professional firefighter. He is the one building below you. I spoke to him after talking to Tex for about 20 min. He was working on getting set up with a quick response unit for putting out a fire on his property and yours should it occur. He did not have a tank yet so I gave him one of the tanks I bought for water saving here in Melbourne. I feel it is the least we can do to aid him in his frontline efforts to quell the small fires that may occur or to fight fire from encroaching larger fires.

I placed a very long pipe in the deep end of the dam to put the firepump sucker pipe into so it is possible to quickly access the water there with his firepump. He has one like you. You also have a tank and we will need it to be setup with your firepump. I have a small trailer here in Melbourne that we will use for this purpose. I have had it resprung with heavyduty springs to carry the weight. I have not taken it up there yet, but it will be the frontline defense we will have when I am working there. The water pump will be setup with it so a woman will be able to use it in an emergency, ie not requiring the lifting of the pump into the back of a ute or such, but merely hitching up the trailer to any vehicle with the strength to shift it. I will have the Jackeroo when I work.

I started the watering of the plants at 630pm and finished at 930pm, and that was possible only because I made a new arrangement with borrowed pipe from the pipe that leads up to the olive tank for watering from the deep end of the dam, and using the rest of the pipe to make a means of watering with 3/4 pipe rather than the 1/2 pipe. With the tank only 1/4 full my pressure only permitted to water each tree over 30 min, one at a time. Once the pump had filled the tank I could do two trees. However I pumped continuously for 3 hours and left the tank 3/4 full and watered all the trees deeply with the use of this extra pipe where the water time of the trees was only 10-15 min. I arranged that I could do one tree with the little existing pipe while doing 2 other trees with the other pipe in the same timeframe.

Initally I moved a small amount of water from the potable rainwater tanks (about 1 foot on the tank measure) to hasten the increase of water pressure available to me.
So it is done, and I got all the explosive things out of the container too so there is not a risk if a fire comes.

planning permit for walled garden

One of the concerns flagged by Dad in relation to the vegetable garden wall is that he feared we needed a planning permit for it. But we didn't understand why that would be the case in our area, as there's no neighbours to overshadow or views to obstruct.

Anyway, we agreed to disagree until Dave and I could do some research ourselves. Here's what we discovered.

Since we initially bought the property, it seems to have been slightly re-zoned. According to the map here, we're now in a Farming zone (code FZ), which is part of the Rural category. A PDF of the requirements for this zone can be downloaded here.

This says we don't need a permit for Agriculture, which in my opinion clearly encompasses a vegetable garden ... which we can't have without building a wall to keep out the sheep and kangaroos. Thus, building a wall to enable us to create a vegetable garden shouldn't require a permit. We figured we'd better doublecheck this logic though, so Dave called Norm at the local planning department.

Norm said we wouldn't normally need a permit, but we might in this instance only because the area being enclosed is much bigger than typical for a garden in the Amherst/Maryborough area. Norm said he knew exactly the kind of thing we meant though, and said there are loads of them in the Western District (which makes sense as that's where a lot of the grander properties were built years ago). He didn't seem to think there'd be a problem getting approval for the wall even if we did need a permit though. What we needed to do was to send him a few sketches... indicating where on the property it is, what it will look like roughly, etc.

Below is what we sent and Norm's brief reply, which we have interpreted as meaning that it's OK to go ahead, provided we abide by building regulations. Which is a big relief as it means there's at least one project we can work on while we're overseas and only able to make sporadic visits.
__________________________________________
DAVE'S EMAIL TO NORM - NOVEMBER 22

Hello Norm,
I'm writing to follow up on our telephone conversation of last week,regarding whether or not a planning permit would be required for awalled garden on our 30 acre property.

Attached are:
--A site plan showing existing buildings/features and also 'proposedbuildings' (what we plan to build once we return from UK in 5+ years)


--A sketch of the garden


The proposed garden is 25m x 40 m, surrounded by a wall of approx 2min height. We're intending for the wall to have old fashioned redbrick columns, but we are still undecided at what will fill in the space between the columns. We are investigating the options of:
- Mud brick/cob wall made in part with clays from the property.
- Wood
- Hebel sheeting

My wife's brother is a bricklayer by trade, and he has offered to build the required foundations and lay the bricks for the columns whenhe has spare time over the upcoming holidays. We intend to continue to build and complete the rest of the wall, with volunteer help from family and friends, on our holiday trips back to Australia. These are usually for 3-4 weeks every 18 months or so.

We decided to make it a walled garden, with a solid wall, in order to:
- Protect from sheep and wild life (kangaroos etc)
- Protect from frosts and wind
- Provide a growing support for espaliered fruit trees and other vines
- Because my wife really likes the style of old fashioned walled gardens

Inside the garden we are thinking about having small sheds at two of the corners of the walls, one for tools, one for growing seedlings/potting etc, although we don't envisage building them until the wall was built.

The garden might seem large compared to suburban vegetable gardens,but we arrived at it after doing research on the growing spacerequired to keep us reasonably self sufficient in vegetables, plus provide room for some small fruit trees that otherwise would not survive the hard frosts.

The site for the garden was chosen because:
- Only really flat land on property near to present house
- Site is near to existing dam, for water supply
- Near to orchard area we have started to plant
- Away from shade of established tall gum trees
- Doesn't disrupt views down the valley

At present, the site for the garden (like all of the 30 acres) is unused except by the next door neighbours who occasionally graze sheep on it to keep the grass down. It is just bare land with no vegetation except for a sparse covering of grass.

Based on the above, do you think we would need planning permission for the garden walls? If so, are there any things we could change about our plans that might make it not the case, at least for the initial stages?

We're happy to apply for permits, but, as this is likely to be a 5+ year project (given the problem of us not living in Australia), we would, more than likely, be unable to complete the structure within 2 years. If we were able to hold off on getting a permit until a later stage of the garden building (eg: after we'd built 2 of the 4 walls or some such other partial step) so that we'd have a shot to complete it within the life of the permit, that would be brilliant. Alternatively, what if we initially just built columns but did not fill in the wall between them? Is it possible to apply for extensions?

Any advice you can give would be appreciated.
____________________________________

NORM'S REPLY - NOVEMBER 29TH

"While walled gardens are not common it looks ok subject to wall heights not being visually excessive in appearance and materials[concept ok] also masonary code building regs apply"

storm damage to trees

Dad went up to water the fruit trees and check the damage from the big storm they had. Here's his email report and photos.






"I arrived at 4pm last Monday and worked until 9pm watering the entire collection of fruit trees in the orchard and the two isolated ones. As far as I could see none of the agaves are left. I had to do repairs for the enclosures damaged by either wind or roos or both. Two of the trees were striped bare, but are budding new leaves.

I transferred 800 gal of potable water to the irrigation tank and put this on the trees over the period 4-8pm, giving apx 20-30min water time to each set of 2 trees which the system will support watering at a time. I will replace the straw lost on the tree nearest the dam at the next visit, as there was not any to be found. Sorry about the agaves.

While watering, I did repairs, re-attaching the shadecloth blown off by heavy winds on those not damaged in other ways. Our method of merely bending the wire back on itself in a loop failed in many places, so I needed to do a twist of the wire on itself to ensure this could not happen again".

designing the walled garden

Shortly after we got back from Australia, my brother Pete lost his job. He's a bricklayer so wanted to earn some fill-in money helping out building the garden wall pillars at Amherst.

So, we started a frantic effort to describe what we wanted done, relayed via Mum and Dad as Pete isn't online yet. As it turned out, the panic was unnecessary as Pete got another job within a few days, but at least we made a little progress thinking through the requirements.

Below are extracts from various emails that describe where we got to in our discussions with Pete. There's also a Flickr set that you might want to jump straight to, which has photos we're using for inspiration:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/sets/72157594370178102/

_______________________________________________

NOVEMBER 6TH - EMAIL FROM ME TO DAD

We had a good discussion with Pete about the brick walls, or rather pillars, and the design on the afternoon just before we left. The plan had been he might try and start over Xmas. But in the circumstances I guess we can bring it forward, although there is still some legwork Dave & I need to do before he can make too much progress.

1) Dave needs to call the permit people. I will try and get him to do it in the next few days.

2) I need to send photos of wall patterns etc that I like for the pillars. Pete showed me some ideas he had and they were really good, but he'd asked me to think some more about it myself and send him some photos.

Where we left it with Pete is that we will be having 16 pillars, some perhaps a bit fancier than others (eg: the gateposts). After discussion with Dave, we're inclined to mostly use bricks he showed us called 'quick bricks' or 'render bricks'... they were of a similar texture to the ones you bought already but they are about 1.5 times the size and Pete thought they would work out cheaper than the smaller bricks, especially when you factor in labour. We also prefer the look of the bigger bricks. Pete did the calculation of how many bricks we'd be likely to need for that and how long it was likely to take (his initial estimate was 2-3 pillars a day) and I agreed a rate of $100 per day cash with him for labour. Of course, we can also pay for reasonable use of petrol too.

What we also agreed was that he would make an initial exploratory trip up to Amherst one time when you were there, so he can actually see the site, see what materials & equipment are available, visit the brickworks himself at Ballarat & Bendigo to see what's available and prices, etc. Perhaps that is something you can do this week with him, and maybe he can even start to pour the foundations for the trenches that are already dug if he urgently needs work. Start with the trench nearest the house, because that will definitely need the concrete foundation all the way along infilling the trench, because we will ultimately be having potting sheds/glasshouse etc leaning against those walls.

I know it probably isn't the usual approach, but I would like to start off just doing the pillars/foundation for the 2 ends we've already dug. That way we don't have to invest in hiring equipment again immediately. Until we know what kind of material we'll be having between pillars, we don't know the type of foundations we'll need. As you know I want to try and avoid digging giant trenches on the 40m sides as they take so long to do with the digger and thus cost $$$$ & instead just have holes where the pillars are. But we need to do more research at our end about these Hever sheets & the planning permission before we can make a decision. So, so as not to hold up Pete, he could start off just doing the short ends.
__________________________________

NOVEMBER 10 - PETE'S COMMENTS

Pete doesn't have email so instead he handwrote a note about the garden wall project, which Dad scanned and sent to me. Here they are (click to make them bigger).




I replied:

I'm OK with the approach of setting up an account with a local guy for materials, and also with Pete's time cost. But, I'd like to have a costing (even if just a ballpark estimate) for all the materials before we commit to proceed. Perhaps on his exploratory trip up there with you, Pete can visit suppliers to get this and find out details of how to set up the account? How we approach paying for the materials is going to depend on cost... we might perhaps give a credit card to the material supplier (in which case it would be coming out of our UK savings) or we might instead have to pay via bank deposit (so it comes out of Australian savings). I can't tell you which until we have the estimate of cost.

I know Pete wants to go ahead quickly as fill in work, but I want to give myself time to a) think carefully about the design, and b) get a response even if informal from the planning guy. I have to write the email to him over the weekend as haven't had time to do it yet. I would hate to invest thousands in building the bloody brick pillars for them to say that we needed to alter it. So, it might be a fortnight or so before we have this, but I will go as fast as I can.

In terms of the Pete's comments re: design/patterns, I need to think more about this and discuss with Dave. We'll attempt to do this over the weekend.

___________________________________________

NOVEMBER 12 - EMAIL TO MUM

As you said you'll be talking to Peter soon Mum, could you pass on the message that we've got pictures to show him? He'd asked us to send lots of photos of things we liked to help him better understand the style we wanted. Even though the focus to begin is on the pillars, we need to think about the whole thing so as to make sure the pillars are in the right place, and that as well there are sufficient foundations for whatever eventually goes inbetween.

The approach I'm trying, because it's too difficult to coordinate otherwise given everyone's different schedules, is to put all the photos onto Flickr into a special set. Then everyone can peruse them at their leisure and add their own comments directly to each photo. ie: we can all have a conversation without it having to be on the phone at the same time, or buried in emails.

Here's the link to the set.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/sets/72157594370178102/

... [from here on you can see the comments as part of the Flickr set]

Day four - digging

Today Dad and Dave started digging a trench for the kitchen garden wall foundation. Dad managed to get hold of a digger which was brilliant, once they got the hang of it. The first challenge for Dad was getting it off the trailer!



They started digging the trench for the back wall. It took ages as the ground is so hard, but they managed to get this back trench dug in about 6 hours. Dave did most of the digging while Dad busied himself setting up 'hurdles' and ensuring everything was totally in line. Here's a few action shots:



Mid-afternoon there was a discussion, during which John (Sam's fiance) made a wonderful suggestion that will save us lots of $$$ and time. He told Dad about this product called "Hebel sheets". Dad hadn't heard of them but they've apparently been out for about 5 years and are a revolutionary product... very light, weather/fire/bug proof, etc. They slot together really quickly and can be finished however you want. Even better, they seem to be more environmentally friendly than brick. We've now decided to use Hebel sheets for the kitchen garden wall, between the brick pillars, to save on labour and expense. We'll render them so the finished effect will be the same, just easier to achieve. :-)

In particular, it means that because the sheets are so light, we don't need a wall foundation on the long sides. We'll still need them on the short sides as that's where we'll have more brick and possibly sheds etc leaning against. But using the Heber sheets we can get away, assuming they're as light as they seem, with only having foundations under the brick pillars on the long side. Which means we don't have to dig 40m trenches today, yay...

But that didn't stop Dave and Dad keeping on digging late at night!

Day three - kitchen garden

Today we got to the block around 9am and met Dad, who'd driven up the night before and stayed over in the caravan. We talked in more detail about the plans for the kitchen garden, so Dad could work out how to tackle it given that it was slightly different to what he'd been envisaging.

At 10am, as we were leaving to get to the architects, two big trucks turned up - one with a load of manure (luckily old manure so it doesn't smell!) and the other with bricks, so we can build a test column later this week perhaps, if time permits.



Dad worked today to get the corners exactly in place, based on our rough line markings using his laser surveying thingy. Tomorrow there is a someone coming at 7.30am - either they're dropping off a digger, or they're actually doing the digging for us (I don't remember what Dad said about it exactly). They'll be digging out a trench for the wall foundation. We may still need to do some widening of it by hand in the areas where the columns will be, but we haven't worked that out yet.

The plan is to have brick columns - probably with breeze blocks or something cheap on the inside, with just bricks as the cladding - with the wall inbetween the columns being finished in a kind of rendered / adobe style. If cost were no object we'd do the whole thing in brick, but this is a compromise I think will look really good.

Next things to do: (tomorrow / Friday)

• Mark out the location of beds and cover with newspaper/manure.

• Work out where the columns will be in relation to the beds. We want to be sure that it's symmetrical.

Day two - paint paint paint

Today was tough... it was hot, it was dusty, it was tiring. But we made a lot of progress.

First up, we focused on the walled vegie garden. Dad is arriving tomorrow with digger in tow to dig the trench for the wall foundation. Before he gets here we had to work out where exactly it was going to be positioned, and what shape.

In the end we decided to put it down near the orchard, slightly closer to the dam than originally envisaged. We choose that spot for a couple of reasons: 1) The land is flat there, so cut out the need for terracing; 2) By having it nearer the lake, the boathouse can also double as a place for having a relax while gardening; 3) We needed to get it out of the shade of the tree.

After trying a few alternatives, we settled on a size of 25m by 40m for the walled area. It sounds enormous, but we want space for a green/shade house, for a big potting and tool shed, for lots of compost bays, for some of the fruit trees that require more protection, etc.

Here's the layout we came up with, at least as a starter. The round thing in the middle is a fountain shaded with a big pergola (ala the one at Sissinghurst in the White Garden):



We used stakes to mark the corners, with the help of string and a measuring tape to get the lengths of each side. 90 degrees was worked out by eye, comparing it to the scrapbook shape! I'm sure it's out by a little but not enough to worry about. At the end, we used spraypaint to mark out the borders, to make it easy for Dad to dig in the tractor thingy.



At lunchtime we went into Maryborough to get some supplies (including hayfever tablets and a new hat for me). On the way back we drove past the house I spotted last time, with the glorious front verandah. Sadly it's in a worse state of repair, oh I really hope they fix it up.

I adore the square bay window on the diagonal and the lovely simple fretwork combined with fancy columns on the porch.



I also ADORE the ceiling... using light blue to mimic the sky. We planned to do this too but I was thinking about skimping and painting it straight onto the metal. Now I see this though I'm afraid we will somehow have to line it to give the effect of boards, even if not the real thing.



In the afternoon we laid out the new house, measuring the downstairs layout in situ, then marking with spraypaint so we could "walk around" the whole thing and get a feel for it:




In wandering round it we discovered that we want to stretch the house to make it a bit more spacious - especially in the library. But that will be the subject of tomorrow's email, as we're seeing Eric to discuss then.

Day one - exploring

On our first afternoon we didn't do much work - instead too busy exploring! After the trees (see previous post), the house was next on our list to look around.

Even though only a little work had been done to it, Dad had rearranged things to give the effect of a room at the front. It really started to let you see how it might feel:



There's also the beginnings of the wraparound verandah at the front, which has been a wonderful place to sit during the hot days:



Dad has also managed to take down a lot of the collapsed extension at the back to reveal the original shape of the house:




The dam was looking particularly nice, albeit less full than I would have liked. It's not really low yet though as you can't see the 'humps' in the middle. We saw lots of sheep go down to the dam for a drink which was lovely to watch. We also saw two egrets wading, getting yabbies no doubt.



I'm more relaxed about getting the dam to look like a lake now than I was. Hopefully the waterlilies will take, but even if not provided we can get the big clay bank covered with reeds and other green stuff, the dam will take on the appearance of a lake. It's the dam wall that makes it look muddy (although the darn yabbies have something to do with it too).


To cap off the day, on the way back to our rented Avoca cottage, we explored some new roads too... driving along Lillicur Road up the side of our property all the way up to the Sunraysia Highway. There was a fantastic sunset as we came over a ridge:

Day one - inspecting trees

Today we drove up to Amherst. It was the first time I've visited in nearly 2 years, and the very first time we've ever been there together with no-one else around.

We arrived mid afternoon and spent several happy hours wandering around. Our goal this trip is less to get lots of work done (although we'll still be busy), and more to get a proper feel for the place. We're staying up here for an entire week, so I'm going to try and blog every day about what we get up to. It's so exciting to be actually on site rather than stuck on the other side of the world!

The brilliant news is that the trees we planted last visit are by and large doing really well. We've lost a few, but nowhere near as many as I'd expected.

The mulberries and plums are doing the best out of all the fruit trees:




The peaches are doing OK but are infected with something on their leaves; the persimmons are OK too although a bit twiggy still - I guess they're just later to bud. The almonds are doing well though.






Overall, the lemon gums are doing better than we expected. We've lost about 5, maybe 10, of the 70+ we planted, which isn't too bad. Almost all the ones lost were in the lower part of the driveway, where the frost would have been most pronounced. The ones that had the fullest shade cloth wrapping as protection unsurprising did the best. There are some that look pretty dead with only a few green leaves; Dave reckons they will bounce back though so fingers crossed. Here's a photo of one of the nice bushy ones.



It's amazing to think that two years ago they looked like this.


The olive grove too is going brilliantly. Again a couple of trees are a little the worse for wear, but most have put on new growth and are looking healthy. Because the soil is so poor and there's little water, we are expecting them to take their time in getting big, but the fact that they've all got new leaves shows that they've settled in.

wollemi pines are doing well

Today we stayed with Dave's parents and had a wonderful lunch out on their patio... next to the Wollemi pines! They are amazing, doing really well with a lot of new growth. The new growth started off a creamy colour apparently and is gradually becoming green. It's still a noticeably lighter shade of green, it looks lovely. According to Jess (Dave's Mum) the trees grow from a small nobbly bit at the top that looks almost like it's been cut off, then it gradually gets bigger and opens out into branches almost like fronds. Then the process begins over.

What impressed me the most about them though was how soft they were, with lovely feathery leaves, not like pine needles or harsh like monkey puzzles as I'd been expecting. They do seem to have a bit of a monkey puzzle habit though, which bodes well. :-)

They're doing so wonderfully under Jess's nurture that we've decided to leave them with her for the foreseeable future in their pots, rather than transplant them to Amherst until there's someone around to look after them. They're too special to risk losing.

The water lily saga

I've been trying to be good and not plan to do too much work while visiting Amherst. Last visit was great but exhausting with little time for dreaming. This trip I want to do some work, but more importantly have time for imagining what it will look like, marking out the house & envisioning the views from the windows, etc.

But in one of our regular discussions bemoaning the muddy state of the dam (as in "why can't it look more like a lake?"), Dave came up with the notion of water lilies.

Now I adore water lilies, always have, although have never successfully grown them (the darn koi ate the ones in our London backyard pond). But they were my Gran's favourite flower, even to the extent she had them in her wedding bouquet. So I always envisaged having a pond with water lilies... but for some reason had never put two and two together and thought of filling the dam with them too.

I couldn't resist making a start on it this trip.

First stop was checking with Prue to make sure I wasn't making a hideous mistake. She said:
"Water lilies would be really lovely, perhaps even water iris on the banks
too. As for suppliers in Melbourne, the best one I knew of has closed down but I
found another online: http://www.walliscreekwatergarden.com.au. The iris can be found at many places but a good range can be found at http://www.tempotwo.com.au".


I then got in touch with Wallis Creek:

"I'm interested in buying some waterlilies from you via mail
order, but would like your advice on which varieties would be
most suited and how many I should get.

The varieties I'm thinking of are:
--Nymphaea "Hal Miller" (white)
--Nymphaea "Karleen Harder" (yellow)
--Nymphaea "William Falconer" (red)
but if there are others that would be better suited let me know.




...During summer the water level can go down significantly
so anything planted fixed in the dam edges would be at risk
of exposure. The dam also has yabbies in it which my husband
refuses to condone getting rid of, so I was thinking of not
planting in the actual dam bed itself but instead in something
like a big garbage bin with holes drilled in the side, as I
presume that would give more protection from the yabbies?
Also, I was thinking of rigging up some floats so that whatever
I planted them in could move around rather than being fixed to
the bottom.... the advantage of this would be that it could
adjust itself to always remain in water if the dam started to
get low. Would love to get your advice as to whether this
would be something you could envisage working or if you have
any better suggestions."


Unfortunately, they replied with some downbeat news:

"Water level fluctuations are ok so long as lillies are
not high and dry until the mud around their roots drys
completely. Your main problem is much more likely to be
the yabbies - They muddy water, snip off leaves and flowers
and dig up and float away tubers - robbing them of food
and anchorage. Placing then in drums will only work if
the drums extend above water level-which won't work
really well. Usually we suggest establishing plants
before animals-it sometimes works then by sheer mass.
I suggest if you want lillies- you may need to trap and
eat as many of your yabbies as you can, especially the
larger ones".


Now unfortunately, trapping & eating the yabbies isn't an easy option as even if we catch them now, they'd soon repopulate and we won't be around to catch them again. And we live in an area that is extremely yabbie-prone. There is even an annual Yabbie Festival in Talbot!

Despite this, I refuse to give up without trying. I've ordered one each of the white and yellow ones above, and to help find a way that yabbies and water lilies can cohabit, I posted on Yahoo & Google Answers. I got responses on both, albeit with more thorough research at Google (as you'd expect, hey, you get what you pay for).

On Yahoo, thanks to odafintutuola:
"All I can think of is a piece of straight culvert or drainage pipe
with slits in it, sunken straight down into the water and drop your
(smaller around buckets) of bulbs down into it, you don't say how
deep you're going to have to sink the buckets so I would only hope
no matter which route you take is going to allow for sunlight to
'bring up' the stems..."

On Google, thanks to hummer, I got some hope - apparently the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne managed to restore water lilies to a lake, helping to protect the lilies from birds and yabbies using netting. At least it is possible! Hummer also found me several suggestions for how to make the floating containers, including one that is very clever, out of an old tyre.

I ran these past the guys at Wallis Creek, and they were skeptical but did come up with one alternative idea:

"I looked at the answers and in my opinion they will not
work in the long term. These answers assume all yabbies
are of a certain size that they will not go through the
net. Once my pond pump was not performing well, it had
been deteriorating over some time. I expected to find a
mud blocked filter, but in fact there was a large yabbie
which must have crawled in when small enough to fit between
2mm slots. If you have a dam try to get yabbie eating fish
like eels or catfish and these will keep them under control."

Eels I loathe, too close in appearance to snakes. But catfish... I wonder if Dave would allow it, hmmm.... Perhaps catfish will be a back-up plan but for this trip, we're going to try making 2 variants of containers.

I'll post pictures of the contraptions as we do them. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

October visit plans

I'm starting to get things organised for our visit to Amherst in October.

I've just found a fairly basic but nice-looking cottage to rent at Avoca Farm Stay that is about 10 minutes drive away. It's got lots of lovely animals including highland cattle that you can meet, the owners seem really friendly, and to top it all off it's got WiFi! We're staying there for a full week, so we can get work done but in a more relaxed way than last time. I can't wait.

Our work plans are scaled back from my last, over-optimistic post. Now we are just going to focus on planting a few more trees and getting the foundation dug/poured for the vegetable garden wall. Anything else will be a bonus.

So far we only have a few things lined up for planting:

Three wollemi pines

See description and photos here


Eight agave americana



"This succulent originates from Mexico and can stand in the hottest sun all day. It grows into a huge plant but can be restricted in a pot for patios etc. Has a distinctive blue colouration. Grows to 3 metres across. Has a huge flower spike after approx 15 years, then dies. Plants on offer are well established plants approximately 25cm high. Grows best in full sun and requires good drainage and infrequent watering. Extremely hardy, especially of hot weather. Propagates from offsets"

More to come I'm sure!

our visit to Beth Chatto gardens

We visited the famous Beth Chatto gardens in Colchester Essex last Saturday afternoon. It was a gloriously hot day so the gardens were extremely crowded, but you couldn't have picked better weather for seeing a "dry" garden.

I'd been looking forward to this for ages as the gardens are famous for being in a very dry part of England, only 500mm rainfall per year apparently, and so similar conditions to Amherst. I was hoping to get lots of inspiration.

Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. The plants were all healthy but somehow there was just something missing for me. It felt like a small botanical garden and lacking a personal touch. Perhaps I'm just too used to gardens with "rooms" but it lacked the magic of other gardens we've visited. It's sad as I'd really wanted to love it, not least because it's in a very dry part of the country with similar rainfall to Amherst, so I would have had a good chance to make something similar! C'est la vie.

The one thing I have taken away from this is that come hell or high water, we have to have lawn around our plantings. Even Dave agrees. Gravel might be OK for a small section, eg: formal herb garden paths, but it is just too hot and washes out the plant colours to have it everywhere, ala the mediterranean garden. Hell, I'll even use fake astroturf if I have to in parts to create the effect of lushness.

Here's a picture of the dry garden, so you can see what it looks like. It's not that it's ugly, it's just that it doesn't move me the way other gardens do. If my garden looked like this, it would be a chore to work in; whereas if my garden was like at Sissinghurst or Hidcote I could gladly labour all day happily.

work to do when we visit in October

Dave and I were talking today about what we should aim to do at Amherst when we visit in late October. We figured it was better to decide early enough that we could get whatever equipment & raw materials we needed sorted without last minute panic.

We're hoping to get up there on a Monday and spend a week working, then on the last weekend have a big BBQ where everyone's invited to come (& also help out if they feel so inclined!)

These are our initial ideas of what to do, which are probably hopelessly over-optimistic.


1. Lay out the broad bones of the front garden areas

By front garden areas I mean the vegie garden, orchard, and the area between the dam/driveway & front of the new house. To help in doing this, I was thinking we could get some bright coloured rope and pegs to hold it roughly in position? I thought about spraypaint on the ground but that won't last, and it's no good when you accidentally put it in the wrong place. Using rope won't be perfect, as we'll probably be wanting to put in some terracing, but will at least give an indication.


2. Dig trenches & pour the concrete foundations for the walls for the vegie garden, and build at least one or two prototype 'columns'.

Dave figures that we could just rent one of those digger things again to rip a trench, then pour concrete all around. As it doesn't need to be smoothed out, hopefully would just be a case of mixing roughly and pouring?

The columns we envisage as being hollow brick cubes, square, roughly 50-60cm x 50-60cm, up to about door height, or maybe even a bit higher. We want them to be hollow not only to save bricks, but so that we can fill from the bottom with rubbish/concrete up to about 1m from the top with a pipe inserted for drainage. The remaining bit we want to fill with soil and plant things in it, like climbers.

The reason for planting the climbers up high is to keep their base out of the way of the kangaroos, and then they can hang down and grow sideways rather than climb up. Then even if the kangaroos get to them in the summer months, it'll be OK provided we have climbers that are spring-flowering and can tolerate hard pruning in summer! We can grow other things, like lavendar or other plants kangaroos don't like lower down.

Ultimately we could even build some taller columns in the middle part of the vegie garden, as we're going to need eventally to have a wire roof over the top to stop the cockatoos, and by having the columns taller in the middle and rigging the net between we might get a sort of big top effect? I'm even dreaming and thinking that perhaps one of the inner columns could be a working outdoor fireplace chimney, so that we would have somewhere to burn things off but also keep us warm during winter days, but that might be a bit extravagant!

In between the columns we haven't decided what we'll put yet, and it's not something we're going to worry with for this trip as we figure we'll have more than enough heavy work just to get the concrete & columns. We're toying with the idea of having a kind of adobe wall that we press the local quartz stones into, to give an effect sort of like this:



But rather than being solid all round we want to intersperse it with "windows". Whether they be real windows, with glass, or open windows with wire, we haven't decided yet.


3. Collect stones

As a simple thing that anyone can help with on the weekend we have the "big BBQ", Dave suggested we start to collect stones. Besides a few wheelbarrows and gloves, don't think we'd need anything more for this? If we just collect the ones on the surface, then in a few years the weathering will reveal more and we can get some more. It'd give us a headstart on gathering the stones for the vegie garden wall.


4. Plant a few more trees

We've just now splurged and ordered 3 wollemi pines which are being delivered to Dave's parents house for safe keeping until then.




Besides helping with their conservation - these are the trees that they only recently discovered weren't extinct and they need lots of people to grow to protect them - they look a bit like monkey puzzles, which I really like but unfortunately don't suit our conditions. The wollemi's will need protection like the other trees, plus we might need to get a little creative with the watering setup during the first summer but we'll find a way. They grow about 0.5 - 1m every year up to a height of 20m according to the official site, so even allowing for our bad conditions hopefully they'll be a recognisable tree inside 5 years. They seem pretty hardy too, able to cope with extremes of hot and cold, so once they've gotten through their first year and used to the lack of water, hopefully they'll be OK.

We were also toying with the idea of planting a few figs in the orchard, if we can find some that are drought-hardy. There's a nice article about them here mentioning various varieties, but I've not yet found anywhere online to order from.


5. Plant some succulents or cacti

These seem like they'd be well suited to the conditions and as they take a long time to grow would be good to get a head start. We want ultimately to have various big specimens dotted around. Varieties we're thinking of are:

Agave Americana



Mountain Aloe (a. marlothii)



Cape aloe, also called bitter aloe (a. ferox)



But these are just ones we saw in Gardening Australia articles - I figure there will be others equally nice. It might require a bit of pre-planning to get hold of them but there seem to be quite a few specialist succulent/cacti nurseries in Australia, according to Nurseries Online.


6. Plant a hedge

This may be overly ambitious, and is the thing I'm most inclined to drop off the list, but because hedges take such a long time to establish we thought it might be worth getting a headstart, at least on a small scale. Of course, we don't know exactly where we'd plant it yet, but sure we could figure that out when we're there... eg: maybe the length of the new house and parallel to it a bit further down towards the driveway (ie: well out of the way of where we'd need to make a mess with building)? Or maybe perpendicular to that to start to give some wind protection to whatever we plant behind in a few years? Hmmm

I'm thinking of our first hedge being with Photinia:


It looks a nice colour and seems to grow fast - 2m in 4 years, so even allowing for our dreadful conditions, it might be passable as a hedge within 6 years hopefully. It likes well-drained soil, full sun, is frost tolerant, and says it copes with drier conditions, and a Gardening Australia article said it was a fire retardant.

Whatever we plant, I was thinking we could protect it by wrapping in a big narrow loop of wire, which could remain in place even once the hedge was grown. Provided it was a sturdy enough framework then we could rely on the kangaroos to help with the pruning!


7. Dump truck of manure

Once we've got the vegie garden area laid out, we thought it'd be a good idea to get a dump truck or two full of manure, to literally just spread on the surface as a way to start improving the soil. If we spread it on and then leave it for a few years, presumably the worms will work it into the soil without us having to dig Also, then Mum could always start to plant pumpkins and things if she felt so inclined.

wrapping trees in blankets

Below are various updates from Mum and Dad about the trees progress, and the huge effort they're putting in up there to protect them from kangaroos, frost, drought, etc. The trees are thriving far more than we'd even dared hope, and it's largely down to our parents efforts. Thank you!!!


Email from Dad (March 12):

Dawn and I spent a huge day yesterday shifting water from the dam and the top tanks and giving the trees along the drive a big drink. I have used 1 1/2 tanks of the potable water and pumped for 3 1/2 hours apx from the dam to leave the olive tree tank full and the watering tank by the house almost full by the end of the day, apx 8 pm.

Where wind protection for the fruit trees was provided, there is tenfold leaf growth. And it is obvious that where the trees have reached height of original tree protectors, without extension, the roos have grazed the tops uniformly on those which did not have a top of shade cloth. On one which is extended, the tree has reached the top of the extended wire and has lovely fresh growth on it and will doubtless continue to outgrow its confines and begin to spread itself. I am relieved that it is patently clear that the young trees have reached into the earth for deep water during this dry spell, and our strategy to not water them much has proved wise indeed.





We're going up again for the next Talbot market and I will do some more watering then of the olive grove, which didn't get water this time, and 4 fruit trees and 8 upper driveway trees. I will also put shade cloth on the remaining fruit tree enclosures while there if I feel up to the job.


Email from Mum (March 31):

Dad and I went up thurs morning, got there about 2.30 as we had lunch on the way and had left late. Got some of the trees done, whipped into maryborough for more wire (Dad had thought only about 10 needed doing urgently, but they all did) and came back - did somemore, knocked off a bit before dark - went into Talbot, walked dogs whilst our meal was being got ready. Bed.. and woke early, breakfast and out at work byut about 7.15 when it got light. Worked furiously, left about 5.30




Email from Mum (April 16):

Dad and I went up yesterday (Sat). We did some of the trees when we got there but not a lot, and got tea and were in bed early, asleep by 8pm. Woke early and dozed on and off, ended up late getting up and it was light an hour before we got out there. We got all trees done that we had shade cloth for and finished as planned a little after 3pm....





We just got home, very tired and sore fingered from wire ties and sore knuckled and handed from the roughness of the shade cloth. We have from memory 16 to do in total still and another 18 or so to do the wrap with but they already have a top on. All wire tops are folded down so they are not hugely above tops of trees so will do some good - a foot or two clearance.

All trees have grown a foot or so since being released from the lower constraining shadecloth.

We plan to go back Tuesday to get the rest done - will buy shadecloth tomorrow, another 50 m or so needed just for the gum trees and then there are a lot of fruit trees to get it done as well - they need it for wind protection.

It has been very cold at nights up there, close to freezing... It ws 0.1 at Coldstream this morning at 6.30am. no wonder I felt so very cold. It was not that bad at Amherst, think it was about 3 there. I think we are getting this tree blanketing done just in time to be honest. Sad they are not going to get so much sun but soon there won't be any anyway. When this lot of shade cloth comes off in about October November - depends on the weather - it will not be going back. I refuse to use a step ladder to put blankets on trees - if you think they need blankets still next winter you two will have to come and do them!


UPDATE: Email from Mum (April 18):

Rest of trees all done including the fruit trees for wind protection. Dad
got an extra 29 metres of shade cloth which was the full amount left on the
roll and we do not have one inch left over. In fact we could perhaps have
done with another couple of inches but made do. If we had cut an overlap or
two shorter earlier we would have been just right - using about 6 inch
overlap early fruit trees (6 total needed wrapping) and the last two were
short but were made to JUST meet.

apply patterns (3): Garden

These patterns are my favourites from the book "Pattern Language", as described in my previous post. In this post I look at the ones relating to garden layout and those spaces which are bridges between house and garden.


#105: South facing outdoors
People use open space if it is sunny, and don't use it if it isn't, in all but desert climes. Therefore:
Always place buildings to the north of the
outdoor spaces that go with them, and keep the
outdoor spaces to the south. Never leave a deep
band of shade between the building and the sunny
part of the outdoors.


As Pattern Language was written in the US, I presume in Australia we'd need to reverse 'north' and 'south', but the basic principles still apply. I guess we will find out when Eric does the "sun test" whether this will be an issue, but I can't see how it will be. There may be some areas of deep shade in the vicinity of the house in the secret garden area, especially when trees grow, but in the height of an Australian summer frankly you need shade.


#106: Positive outdoor space
Outdoor spaces which are merely leftover between buildings will, in general, not be used. Therefore:
Make all the outdoor spaces which surround and
lie between your buildings positive. (which seems
to mean: give it a distinct shape, as definitely
as a room, and make its shape as important as the
shapes of the buildings that surround it, but don't
make it too enclosed). Give each one some degree
of enclosure; surround each space with wings of
buildings, trees, hedges, fences, arcades, and
trellised walks, until it becomes an entity with
a positive quality and does not spill out
indefinitely around corners.



#114: Hierarchy of Open Space
Outdoors, people always try to find a spot where they can have their backs protected, looking out torward some larger opening, beyond the space immediately in front of them. Therefore:
Whatever space you are shaping, make sure of
two things. First, make at least one smaller space,
which looks into it and forms a natural back for it.
Second, place it, and its openings, so that it
looks into at least one larger space. When you
have done this, every outdoor space will have a
natural back; and every person who takes up the
natural position, with his back to this back ,
will be looking out toward some larger distant view





#115: Courtyards which live
Courtyards intended to be private open spaces often end up unused, full of gravel and abstract sculptures. Most common reasons courtyards fail are because there is too little ambiguity between indoors & outdoors, so the transition is too abrupt; because there are not enough doors into the courtyard, so no-one ever passes through; or simply becuase they are TOO enclosed. Therefore:
Place every courtyard in such a way that there is
a view out of it to some larger open space; place it
so that at least 2 or 3 doors open from the building
into it and so that the natural paths which connect
these doors pass across the courtyard. And, at one
edge, beside a door, make a roofed verandah or a
porch, which it continuous with both the inside
and the courtyard.



#120: Paths and Goals
The layout of paths will seem right and comfortable only when it is compatible with the process of walking. And the process of walking is far more subtle than one might imagine. As you walk along you scan the landscape for intermediate destinations and try (more or less) to walk in a straight line toward these points, wiht the effect that you often 'cut corners'. These intermediate destinations, however, keep changing becuase the further you walk the different your vantage point, the more you can see round a corner. Therefore:
To lay out paths, first place goals at natural
points of interest. Then connect the goals to one
another to form the paths. The paths may be straight
or gently curving between goals; their paving should
swell around the goal. The goals should never be
more than a few hundred feet apart.





#163: Outdoor room
A garden is the place for lying in the grass, swinging croquet, growing flowers, throwing a ball for the door. But there is another way of being outdoors: and its needs are not met by the garden at all. For some moods, some times of day, some kinds of friendship, people need a place to eat, to sit in formal clothes, to drink to take together, to be still, and yet outdoors. They need an outdoor room, literally - a partly enclosed space, outdoors, but enough like a rooms that people behave in it as they do in rooms, but with the added beauties of the sun, wind, smells, rustling leaves. Therefore:
Build a place outdoors which has so much enclosure
around it that it it takes on the feeling of a room,
even though it is open to the sky. To do this,
define it at the corners with columns, perhaps roof
it partially with a trellis or a sliding canvas roof,
and create 'walls' around it with fences, sitting
walls, screens, hedges or the exterior walls of
the building itself.



#167: Six foot balcony
Balconies and porches which are less than six feet deep are hardly ever used. Therefore:
Whenever you build a balcony or porch, always make
it at least 6 feet deep. If possible, to give it an
added feeling of security, recess at least a part of
it into the building so that it is not cantilevered
out and separated from the building by a simple line,
and enclose it partially - eg: with a low wall or
heavy columns. In terms of space, treat it as an
outdoor room



#168: Connection to the earth
A house feels isolated from the nature around it unless its floors are interleaved directly with the earth that is around the house. You want a house to feel rooted as if it belongs where it is placed. Therefore:
Build a series of paths and terraces and steps
around the edge of the building. Place them deliberately
to make the boundary ambiguous, so that it is impossible
to say exactly where the building stops.





#174: Trellised walk
Trellised walks have their own special beauty. They are so unique, so different from other ways of shapng a path, that they are almost archetypal. Therefore:
Where paths need special protection or where they
need some intimacy, build a trellis over the path and
plant it with climbing flowers. Use the trellis to
help shape the outdoor spaces on either side of it.



#238: Filtered light
Light filtered through leaves or tracery, is wonderful. This is because direct light casts strong shadows resulting in harsh images, and also because filtering reduces glare. Therefore:
Where the edge of a window or the overhanging eave
of a roof is silhouetted against the sky, make a rich,
detailed tapestry of light and dark to break up the
light and soften it. You can do this, most easily,
with climbing plants trained to climb around the
outside of the window. If there are no plants you
can also do it beautifully with simple canvas awnings.



#243: Sitting wall
In many places walls and fences between outdoor spaces are too high; but no boundary at all does injustice to the subtlety of the divisions between the spaces. Therefore:
Surround any natural outdoor area, and make minor
boundaries between outdoor areas with low walls, about
16 inches high, and wide enough to sit on, at least 12
inches wide. Place the walls to coincide with natural
seat spots, so that extra benches are not necessary.

trees are still struggling on, but lost some

Let me start with the bad news... Dad says at least a dozen of the lemon gum trees are dead, like this one:


Dad thinks this wasn't due to the frost because it isn't tip damage but the entire tree. He says it was due to "wet feet" - in other words, in one of the driest parts of Victoria my trees drowned! His theory is that because we'd planted them in a little 'hollow' to help in catching water during the dry season, when it bucketed down in huge storms in winter the holes filled and the water didn't seep away fast enough.

Even more bad news, many of the other trees which hadn't drowned were being choked by grasses, like this one:


... but fortunately, upon weeding, there was still a surviving tree inside:


It took Dad ages to do. He had to cut access slits in the protector wires for each tree in order to be able to reach inside. He then weeded each and put down the cut grass as mulch, then sewed the slits back up. All up it took around 15-20 minutes per tree!!! Dad has worked so hard on this, I wish we could have helped. We owe him big time.

After he was finally done, you can see that the driveway is starting to take shape, they are definitely little bushes now. It will be worth it in the end, I just hope we don't lose any more... and next year, they will hopefully be big enough to stand taller of the grasses.

the great Apple tree search

So often I find myself embroiled in a hunt for some obscure object. This time it's a variety of heritage apple tree.

Last weekend, I took Mum to the RHS's show gardens at Wisley and it turned out to be their annual "Apple Day". They had tastings of lots of different varieties of apples that they grow - they have over 700 varieties of Apple tree alone in their orchard, and that's only a small part of the garden! Anyway, I am not normally a fan of eating fresh apples, having had one too many bad experiences of floury horrible tasting ones. But, I made an exception at this event as I was curious.

Thank goodness I did as I'd no idea how different each variety would taste. Out of the 30 or so varieties we got to taste, I discovered two that I really love. Of course, neither are commercially available in shops which means I have to grow my own... hence, the great Apple tree search begins.

Now, luckily, we actually have a head start because I discovered when I got home that one of them, Egremont Russet, is the variety we planted at the allotment a few months ago. I picked it at the time because it seemed the most obscure of all the varieties at the gardening centre, having no idea what it tasted like... I'm so glad I like it! (otherwise I would have just used it for cooking & given to the birds).

But, the other variety, my favourite, is far more elusive. It's a cultivar called "Puckrupp Pippin" which looks dreadful both whole and cut up. Here's a picture:



But looks are deceptive, as it tasted amazingly creamy and I liked it so much that it's sparked this search.

I've managed to find a UK supplier and placed an order for delivery in September 2006. It takes so long because they graft the trees to order. Apparently apple trees planted from seed don't 'come true' to the variety of the original apple the seed came from. The only way to get a copy is to graft a cutting onto the rootstock of another apple tree. They do this in January and then they're ready to be planted out in September.

So, the problem is solved for London for the short term, but I would love to find an Australian supplier so that we could have a tree at Amherst too. So far no luck, but I've emailed a few heritage orchards in Australia so fingers crossed.

chicken moats

Is this not one of the coolest ideas? A chicken moat!!! The chickens are nearby and kept within a secure area, so safe, but they also serve as guards, eating the pests and weeds. I think we'll need a chicken moat around our vegetable garden.

Thanks to Building the Homestead blog for the idea.

photos of lemon gums

We got back from Australia two days ago & have new photos of Amherst.

The most exciting thing for me is that it is green! A gorgeous lovely deep green colour I feared it would never achieve given what a dry area it's in. I'm now reassured that - at least for a few months of the year - we'll be able to get it looking like I've dreamed.



The trees are also doing very well. Given how cold it's been we were worried they might struggle, especially the lemon gums. But, they've made it and they've grown an amazing amount considering it's only been around 10 months since we planted them.

Here's what the lemon gums look like now...


...and just as a reminder, here's what they looked like when we planted them in October 2004. The tree was so small and thin, you could barely see it!

It's very cold at Amherst

From Mum's email:
"It has been below zero since 8pm on the 9th Aug at Lookout Hill, which is near Ballarat and Talbot, sort of. It is always colder than Ballarat. Below zero all day yesterday takes some beating ... At 1.30 pm today it reached a high of 0.7C"

We're very worried about the lemon gum trees - the ones we planted to line the driveway. We were told they were quite susceptible to frost when young so had been praying for mild winters; instead it's been the coldest winter for 50 years.

Update: We've since found out that the gum trees survived! The shelters that we built to protect them from kangaroos and the hot sun seem to have helped stop frost too. Especially the shadecloth on the top, I think. Apparently, only around 2-3 of the smallest trees were hit hard by the frost - these were a few months younger than the others as Dave's parents had planted them as replacements for ones which hadn't thrived from the first planting. But, even these appear to be making a comeback... so, fingers crossed, they'll all make it.

what I've learned about herbaceous borders

Over the past year I've been jotting down learnings for the future garden at Amherst. Here's what I've picked up so far about herbaceous borders and their variants. This includes not only what they are and how you maintain them, but also tips on designing them and ideas from famous garden designers. If anyone reading has any suggestions, please add them in the comments... this is very much a "living" entry for me as I'll be updating it as I learn more.

Because this post has become so huge, I've divided it into sections:
--Style overview
--Definitions
--How to look after borders
--General tips on how to design and plant borders
--Inspiration from Gertrude Jekyll
--Inspiration from Edna Walling
--Inspiration from Vita Sackville-West
--Inspiration from Piet Oudolf

STYLE OVERVIEW
_____________________

There seems to be two broad schools for designing herbaceous borders. The traditional version from Edwardian times is what you'd see in your typical English country manor house garden, and the kind I first fell in love with. It is sometimes also called "English Arts & Crafts" style too as it was all part of the Arts & Crafts movement. Gertrude Jekyll was the leading proponent, and Vita Sackville-West illustrated it wonderfully it in her own garden at Sissinghurst. In Australia, Edna Walling was of a similar vintage to Vita and interpreted it in an Australian setting. Traditional style borders typically use a lot of cottage garden style plants which require quite a bit of fussing over to keep looking good ... but oh how glorious they look when you do. Here's an example from Gravetye Manor, which was actually designed by a contemporary of Gertrude Jekyll called William Robinson (I only know this as I'm saving up to visit it... it's now an extremely posh hotel!)




The modern school of perennial gardening I've only recently discovered. I think it originated in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands - although I believe it also has some connection to the Prairie style of gardening in the US. Here in Europe, the leading proponent seems to be Piet Oudolf. These seem to be called wild or natural style borders. Although broadly-speaking they use plants of the same category as in traditional-style borders (ie: mostly perennials) there's a totally different ethos in choosing and positioning specific plants. They're supposedly lower maintenance too, once established,which is a definite plus! Here's an example:



As you can see, quite a difference. I think the wild style looks beautiful too, just in a less controlled and more natural way than the traditional version. You'd think this would automatically imbue a more relaxed feeling, but I don't think it does.... nature can be quite dramatic, and often I find the sense of having "control" is quite soothing even if it's just an illusion!

I'm not yet sure what we planting style we'll go for at Amherst... I suspect for the sake of practicality we'll mostly go for the wilder look. I think that looks better too when you have big sweeping paddock views as backdrop, as we do, rather than wooded enclosures. Plus it just feels more in line with my natural instinct in gardening which is just to throw things in higgledy-piggledy and let them get on with it! (Which is actually not the way you're supposed to do either style but hey... at least I have "wild roots"!). But, I don't think I'll be able to forgo my visions of Sissinghurst entirely... I suspect I'll keep at least one border area to play around with in the traditional style.

DEFINITIONS
____________

Now, I know I know, this part sounds like it's going to be really dull. But I promise, it isn't long and helps make it clearer... some of these terms get bandied around so much that I think it's assumed everyone knows what they mean. I thought I did too until I looked them up!

Herbaceous means either having the characteristic of a herb or being leaf-like in color and texture. They don't have a permanent woody stem and they die back to ground level in winter. Perennial means that they live for years and years (unlike annuals which live just one year, but which might appear to live longer if they've self-seeded). Herbaceous perennials are thus plants that are both herbaceous and perennial!

A shrub is any woody bushy perennial plant that branches into several stems at the base, but that is smaller than a tree. The woody parts stay permanently above ground. Now I've come across some references online to "herbaceous shrubs"... I'm not sure if this is just sloppy wording but assuming not, then I'm guessing it means herbaceous plants that have a kind of woody stem but it isn't permanent and dyes back in winter. Or, it could mean plants like Penstemon which are technically herbaceous perennials, but when they get old they get woody at the base of the plant? Hmmm...

Herbaceous borders are simply garden borders that are closely planted with only herbaceous perennials. In the US these are more commonly known as a Perennial border. Done well, they look great and also ensure you really notice the passing of the seasons. This is something very important for the garden at Amherst as in Australia where seasons tend to blur more than they do here in the UK, thus why I plan to have a lot of perennials.

Shrub borders are a similar concept to herbaceous borders but they contain only shrubs. A mixed border is a border which has a mixture of shrub and perennial plants, plus often some bulbs, annuals and maybe even small trees too. A double border is simply when you have a path down the middle and plantings in borders on either side. I suspect we will be going for the mixed border as I doubt I'll be able to disciplined enough to restrain myself! (I tend to buy plants on a whim...)

HOW TO LOOK AFTER BORDERS
____________________________

In the traditional style, looking after herbacous borders properly takes a lot of work, besides the obvious weeding, mulching and watering. Every 3-5 years you need to dig up aka "lift" the perennials and "heel" them in elsewhere (ie: put them in a trench and cover roots with dirt for temporary storage). Exceptions to this are plants like Peonies which hate being moved. Then, you need to dig over and enrich the soil of the border as they need a lot of feeding. Then you need to divide the perennials if they're overgrown (which they most likely will be) and replant.

(As a sidenote - the technique for dividing varies by plant I think but the few times I've done it so far it's been obvious - either the plant itself almost fell apart once out of the ground; or the roots were so tightly interwoven that all I could do was hack it into chunks. But a quick search reveals there is a lot more to it, so next time I will be more scientific! )

Supposedly mixed borders are less work but I'm guessing it would be a real pain to have to dig out the perennials from the roots of the shrubs, so perhaps having a shrub border that is separate from the herbaceous border isn't such a bad idea after all. Of course a shrub border is probably even less work but it doesn't give you the same sense of changing seasons that perennials do.

Feeding the soil in traditional style borders is vital as the plants use up lots of nutrients in growing. In an episode of "Gardens through time" they illustrated a technique Gertrude Jekyll used to follow, which seems quite practical... I was surprised I'd never heard of it before. Basically, you dig deep pits in the border. You put compost material like old leaves, etc, it doesn't matter as it doesn't need to be rotted down only mashed up a bit. Put in a few layers of that and then some sand to improve drainage and well rotted manure. Then fill the pit back up with soil. This way, all looks neat and lovely on top but down below there's a stash of food for the plants. I imagine it'd also be quite a practical way of clearing out your compost heap of all those things that take forever to rot down.

You also need to provide supports for many perennial plants in borders so they don't flop over! The ideal is something that the plants can grow around so that the support is hidden. Vita Sackville-West described an interesting way to do this: "in the idle indoor days of winter employ your leisure making large circles of stout wire, criss-crossing them with thinner wire into, say, four sections, meeting in a sort of hub at the middle; then supply a central pole... In the spring start your wire circle a few inches from the ground, raising it gradually up the central pole as the height of the plant increases, and as the plant grows through the sections"

Now that's what's needed for traditional style style. The modern "natural" style of border is quite different. The kind of plants you use in them require a lot less maintenance, so you don't need to do any of the dividing, feeding, staking of the traditional version. They're not entirely maintenance free though - you still have to clear out the dead growth (albeit at the end of winter rather than autumn) and deal with weeding and mulching.

I suspect you need a more ruthless streak for modern borders ... in it's purest form the idea is to drill down to just a narrow range of plants which are the ideal for the conditions you're growing in, and to not be afraid to rip out plants that don't perform brilliantly. You also need a certain confidence which I think probably only comes through practice. In the words of Piet Oudulf: "You have to guide nature or else it gets out of hand, but you have to know exactly when to intervene. It is much more difficult than just clipping". I can see there's still a lot to learn!

GENERAL TIPS ON HOW TO DESIGN & PLANT BORDERS
___________________________________________

To get the full effect of the traditional style, herbaceous borders should be at least 5 to 6 feet wide and 20 to 30 feet long. It's also helpful if they're framed - e.g., by a clipped hedge or a wall - because the strong lines of that will help define the space and are a good contrast with the lushness of the border planting. Mixed borders generally need to be even bigger to accomodate shrubs like roses, etc which take up a lot of space.

The aim in border planting is to have as little bare ground showing as possible. Not only does this help them look good, it cuts down on weeding.

A good rule of thumb when planning the planting for a border is to start with 3 tall "structural" plants at the back, then work forward, relating each layer to the ones behind. Add "filler" plants last (ie: those plants that tend to creep and flow into spaces between other plants) and progressively more at the front. Repeating a structural plant along a border injects a strong sense of rhythm, whereas doing the same with a filler plant is more subtle.

Generally too you put taller plants in the back of the border and small ones at the front. However, shouldn't be too regimented about it; sometimes having a tall plant at the front can be really effective. You just have to go intuitively with what works, and shouldn't be afraid to move things around from year to year.

In choosing plants for the border, you want your structural plants to be extremely reliable, because the success of the border's appearance depends heavily on them.

Ideally you want to choose plants which have good "continuity" - i.e., they have interest over a longer period by virtue of flowering over an extend period, having lovely seedpods, interesting stems, etc. But, there are a lot of wonderful plants with only short continuity. A way to use these is to plant a cycling selection close together so that as one dyes back another is coming into the height of it's beauty.

A way to add instant structure to a herbaceous border is to put in wigwams for clematis to clamour up.

Having plants with purple foliage in a border gives a good backdrop to bright colours.

No colour combinations in a border are wrong, just some will be unfashionable! Plantings which are themed by colour are most effective when used in small regions as part of a wider whole. Colour can be used to inject rhythm into a border even if different plant are used.

Grasses scattered through a mixed border can be very effective because they created a haze and movement that makes a border feel larger than it really is. They also help to extend the season. But, grasses are not part of the traditional scheme so if you're including them then you're automatically moving towards a modern style. Grasses don't usually look that good next to some of the really traditional plants like roses, for instance. Also, you have to be careful planting grasses next to other species of grasses because they can often clash.

A trick for coming up with new plant combinations for the border is to cut a flower off a plant in bloom and hold it up against other plants in bloom at the same time elsewhere in the garden. This makes it easier to see how one plant can enhance or detract from another, and might throw up some new ideas. I guess it's the gardening equivalent to fabric swatches - sometimes colours and patterns that you think would go well together when you see them separately just don't work when you put them close up! And, given that you're going to be lifting and dividing most of the plants anyway every few years, it's a perfect opportunity to rearrange.

A good tip is to envisage your border as if it were in a B&W photo. If it looks bland then it suggests you're relying too much on colour. A good border planting should have enough variety of shape to still look good in B&W.

In wilder style gardens, self-seeding annuals can be great at filling spaces without requiring much work.

INSPIRATION FROM GERTRUDE JEKYLL
__________________________________

Gertrude Jekyll is famous for her garden border designs, which weren't only herbaceous. In one of the TV shows I watched they called her the "Mrs Beeton of gardening" which I think is a nice description! (By the way, the way you pronounce her surname is "jeeeek-el" not "jeckal" as in Jekyll & Hyde. I didn't know this till I watched a TV show called "Art of the Garden" that had a whole episode dramatising her... in one of the scenes "she" was shown correcting a visitor who mispronounced her name! So now I won't look so ignorant at the gardening centre... :-)

Jekyll designed entire gardens but perhaps her most famous innovation was the spectrum border. This is where plants are positioned so that hot colours pave the way for cooler ones and vice versa. She planted in drifts so that the plants all blurred one into the other...starting with whites and pale colours moving gradually through to greens and yellows and red, and then back again, like in the colour spectrum. I like this idea a lot, so I think we shall experiment and attempt at least one "Jekyll style" border. But, no way will be doing it on the scale she did - the border at her house in Munstead Wood was 200ft long and 14 ft wide!

To do it perfectly requires incredible attention to detail and you really have to know your plants. Choosing plant positionings isn't just about colour and growing requirements, you also need to factor in differences in their height and form throughout the seasons - including so that when one plant starts to die back another nearby comes up to take it's place. One of the "Hidden Garden" TV episodes I saw showed how Jekyll had planned it to the extent so that the middle of one plant after pollination which turned pink would contrast with the pale purple tones of the petals of another plant just coming out... Wow.

Of course, you could just cheat and copy one of her border designs - there's a book she wrote called "Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden" which I've just ordered from Amazon. It has detailed planting plans apparently as well as articles. Once it arrives I'll have a look and update this post with some more specific learnings.

But, I doubt we'll be able to copy anything directly from Jekyll's planting schemes simply because the types of plants that will thrive in the Amherst growing conditions are so different to Southern England. Also, the quality of light (and shadow) is a key determinant the overall effect and that differs hugely. In Australia, the light is a lot harsher than in the UK so pastel colours just get wiped out whereas in the UK they shine through. This is why it's so hard to replicate an English style garden in Australia in all it's softness... although it isn't going to stop me trying at least in one well protected and cosseted corner!

I plan to research Australian and US garden designers to learn how they've translated Jekyll style border plantings to the different conditions. For instance, perhaps there are some tricks of positioning, like having pastel colours only in shady areas? I don't know yet... I'll add to this post as learn! Plus of course, Prue will be a font of knowledge, considering that drought-tolerant English-style gardens are one of her specialties.


INSPIRATION FROM EDNA WALLING
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A designer I thought might have had some useful ideas with regards to translating Jekyll style borders to Australian conditions is Edna Walling, but so far they've proved difficult to unearth. Edna is probably the most famous Australian garden designer and sort of a contemporary to Gertrude Jekyll, in that they were both working around the same time in the 1920's even though they were very different ages. Edna was born in the UK and emigrated to Australia via New Zealand and lived for a long time in the Dandenongs in the outskirts of Melbourne - an area I know and love, it's where I grew up.

Despite this, I'd never even heard of her until we embarked on our Amherst project! I think that's more a sign of how little I was interested in gardening when I lived in Australia than her lack of profile... when I asked my Mum, who's not that into gardening, she not only knew of her but said she'd tried to make the garden at the house where I grew up in the Edna Walling style! From what I've gathered so far, her overall style didn't change much - it was always "formal structure with luxuriant, often rampant, planting", and she loved using stone (paths, walls, etc). But her choice of plants did; she started out using a lot of the English cottage garden species but over time grew to love and champion Australian natives.

I have two books relating to Edna Walling. One is called "The vision of Edna Walling" and includes copies of all her garden plans as well as background. I've only skimmed through it so far but unfortunately the plans don't seem to have anything like the level of planting detail for borders which Gertrude Jekyll's do. So, although it's interesting from the broad perspective of garden design, so far it hasn't been particularly insightful on designing borders for Australian conditions. I'll keep reading, perhaps there will be some tidbits along the way. As a sidenote, I found it interesting to discover that she was influenced heavily not only by Jekyll but also by Geoffrey Jellicoe who I blogged about earlier here and here. This gardening world is a small one!

The second book was written by Edna herself. It is called "Gardens in Australia - their design and care" and is fascinating because it's been printed based on the original edition (published in 1943) with Edna's handwritten annotations about what she wanted to change. It makes it quite personal to read and also poignant because it took 50 years before her changes finally got into print! I still haven't read this properly but it is a lot more like a "how to" guide than the other book, even though it isn't very long by the time you take out all the black & white photos!

Chapter 4 is about herbaceous perennials and there are some she singles out for attention. Various breeds of Achillea (yarrow), Campanula, Asters and Penstemons are mentioned. She also likes Japanese Irises (Iris Kaempferi) and suggests planting them behind a grouping of Aster King George, Penstemon heterophyllus, Erigeron and Campanula rotundifolia (harebell). Other plants she mentions as possibilities but "a matter of personal choice" are Phlox, Lupins, Peonies, Delphiniums and cascade Chrysanthemums. Here are some pictures of those plants she referred to by specific cultivar, click on any for further details. They're not all precisely the exact varieties because a few I couldn't find reference to... (guessing they've changed names or gone away?). But, I've included the closest variant I could find based on her descriptions. I wouldn't plan on sticking too closely to this since I'm sure in terms of spirit she would have moved with the times and we have lots more choice nowadays. But I think it's interesting to see her choices none-the-less.




Chapter 17 includes a section about planting borders in hot and dry positions. Plants she refers to are Lavender, Rosemary, Cistus (rock roses), Choisya ternata (mexican orange), Philadelphus Mexicana (mexican mock orange), lemon-scented Geraniums and Cotoneaster. There are also some lovely concepts... the idea of planting enough lavendar and rosemary bushes so there's space "to dry your handkerchiefs on them"; her belief that "you haven't lived until you've lain flat on your back on a thyme lawn"!

Chapter 32 is about Australian plants for borders. I'm interested in this especially because I'm assuming they'll be better suited to Australian conditions and her picks are likely to be "cottage garden" in style. Some of the plants she highlights which I like are Boronia Pinnata, Thryptomene Mitchelli, Baeckia Plicata, Eriostemon myoporoides, Prosthanthera ovalifolia & sieberi (native mint), Acacia drummondii (dwarf wattle), Acmena smithii (formerly Eugenia Smithii) which is tall and good for screening, Leptospermum keatleyii & rotundifolia and last but not least Grevillea contfertifolia (particularly good for dry conditions)




That's it so far from Edna about borders although I'm sure there must be more to learn from her beyond only plant choices, especially considering she used to write magazine articles. I'll keep an eye out and update if I come across anything more

One final sidenote on Edna... this is a link to view a manuscript she wrote about a house she built from scratch in the midst of a hilly bush site near the beach at Lorne in Victoria. It was never actually published but reading it makes you realise what a remarkable woman she must have been. We're talking about the 1940's when Australia was incredibly conservative. Edna wasn't afraid to stand out - she dressed in men's clothes, undertook huge tasks like building a house from scratch and by hand in the bush(!) and most impressive of all was seemingly quite open about her relationship with her female partner. I like her style and attitude. My favourite part of this manuscript is the description of them digging out a level area on the steep slope for the lounge room and finding a big stone... and deciding to leave it in position and use it as the base of an armchair!

INSPIRATION FROM VITA SACKVILLE-WEST
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In fact, Edna Walling reminded me quite a bit of Vita Sackville-West in terms of not being afraid to be unconventional. Vita, along with her husband Harold Nicolson, created Sissinghurst Garden which is one of the most spectacular gardens I've ever visited. Like Hidcote, I try and go as often as I can. At Sissinghurst, Harold created the architectural framework (a series of "rooms") and Vita came up with the planting schemes.

I have a few books relating to Sissinghurst and Vita. One, which was the first Gardening book I ever bought, is called "Gardening at Sissinghurst". It's full of wonderful images and lots of detail about the planting. It even includes detailed planting schemes for several borders. Two that I particularly like are the Purple Border in the entrance courtyard and the Sunset cottage garden.

The purple border:

The above is the planting scheme as of 1994 as shown in the book, click on it for a closer view. Supposedly Jekyll had said that purple wasn't a good colour for a border because it could come across as "sullen and lifeless" in sunny weather... so Vita set out to prove her wrong! I'm guessing we'd need to do some judicious plant-swapping to make something like this work at Amherst just due to the different conditions, but it could be a helpful starting point. I also love the way they've drawn up the planting scheme, using watercolours to match the flowers so you can see how it all works together.

Sunset garden:

This is part of the cottage garden room and it's just glorious. It's my favourite part of Sissinghurst. Here's a picture to show you what it looks like as well as the planting scheme. I am hoping we'll have more luck in replicating this at Amherst because the colours - yellow, orange, red - are more likely to work in Australian light. To view details click on the pictures to make them larger.

Vita wrote articles about gardening for the Observer newspaper and these have been published in several books, two of which I have: "In your garden" and "In your garden again". I've not read cover-to-cover for a long while but from memory the focus of most articles was on a particular plant rather than general design or maintenance tips. I'm planning to re-read them so if I come across anything more that's relevant to borders (besides the tip included way up above in the first section) I'll add it.

INSPIRATION FROM PIET OUDOLF
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Unlike the other garden designers I've discussed who are from 50-100 years ago, Piet Oudolf is a modern day designer. He's Dutch and I've not yet seen one of his gardens in real life, but I hope to one day. His specialty is Perennials and designing gardens which are "natural" in the sense that they work with way perennials develop in nature and thus don't require lots of maintenance (unlike your traditional perennial border). A great example of this in the UK is the Millenium Garden he designed in Norfolk at Pensthorpe. In the US, his best example I think is the Gardens of Remembrance for 9/11 that he created at The Battery in NYC.

My favourite book about his style so far is "Designing with Plants". (I also have his book "Dream Plants for the Natural Garden" but this is just a listing of plants and it's not that useful for me as the growing conditions he's basing it on aren't the same as at Amherst). However, the "Designing with Plants" book is a lot more practical in that it describes a new way of categorising plants and gives general principles about how to best combine them. I've summarised what I've learned from this below, but it's not a substitute for the book which explains it better in more detail with wonderful pictures.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Piet's approach and that of the traditionalists is that he downplays the role of colour. For him colour is a secondary consideration - the most important factor is structure. There are two aspects to this: foliage shape and flowerhead form.

Foliage shape takes into account the size and outline of leaves, and the overall pattern of growth. Some general points:
-- Large bold leaves stand out and serve as resting points for your eye
-- Small leaves sink into the background when viewed from afar
-- "Linear" foliage like for grasses is good for adding contrast
-- Anything with a distinctly different foliage shape can be repeated to add rhythm

Flowerhead form is about the structure of the flowers themselves. Rather than the official botanical classification, Piet categorises them into 6 groups:

Spires add lift and inject a note of clarity in a border. They work best as a dramatic contrast amidst other flower types. It is very hard to make a cluster consisting of only plants with spire-shaped flowers look good

Plumes are like spires but fluffier and looser. They work very well en-masse, imbuing softness. They are also excellent for linking different forms

Umbels have an upturned bowl shape. Although they often stick out on a stem, they are more gently rounded rather than pointy like a spires. They are made up of lots of little flowers. Like plumes, they add a soft and gentle look. They are also excellent for imbuing a sense of naturalism, since many wildflowers have this shape.

Buttons and globes add concentrated bursts of colour. They are especially good displayed against a backdrop of softer shapes like plumes or a muddle of fine stems. They are also very good in winter in standing out well amidst the decay appearing as dark spots

Daisies are the familiar shape we all know. After flowering, often the petals drop off and then they convert to being a button shape. Daisies are a reminder of sunshine and add a sense of optimism.


Screens and curtains are transparent, made up of a network of stems. They bring a new perspective to other plants growing behind when viewed through the "screen". They also help to bring a sense of mystery. You shouldn't include too many of them though as they can destroy the pattern.

In general:
-- Having a variety of flowerhead shapes in a border stops it looking monotonous
-- You can often get away with combining clashing colours if the flowerhead shapes
are the same. (I've seen this done really effectively combining daisies)
-- Spires and umbrels are good counterpoints; plumes are good as filling. Buttons
and daisies are good for adding a sense of definition.

Although structure as described above is the most important consideration in this design approach, there are other factors to consider too.

The texture of foliage adds another dimension, particularly when viewed close-up. There are many aspects to texture - for instance, leaves can be furry, ridged, pointy, glossy etc. Some general points:
-- Plants with leaves that have a very fine texture need to be nearer the front
of a border if you want to be able to appreciate them fully
-- Glossy leaves stand out the most
-- Bright sunlight tends to dull texture so differences aren't as noticeable

Finally, of course there is the consideration of colour. In Piet's design philosophy the choice of colour primarily affects the "mood" of the border. He divides colours into 5 categories and gives advice on how to use each in a border:

Hot colours, which includes reds, yellows and oranges are very strong colours. They're the most dynamic colours so the advice is to use them with caution unless you're deliberately seeking to create a hot-toned border (like the one by Vita illustrated above). They're great for providing a splash of colour in a border. Red is the first colour to disappear at dusk. Dark reds are enigmatic and mysterious, so good to accompany unusual flowers. They're also easier to combine with other colours.

Cool colours, which includes blues and purples, and Sweet colours like pink are more subtle. They appear best in the cool light of early morning. Purple can work well with hot colours as it helps to calm them. Blue is a recessive colour, so is good for adding the perception of depth. Blue and pink are excellent linking colours, but don't overuse the latter as it can be cloying. Pink works best in climates with grey skies and soft light (so not in Australia then!)

Sombre colours are the unusual darker versions of colours, like a very deep dark red or purple. They add depth and mystery and can work well combined with pale colours to startle. However, if you plant too many of them together it creates a very gothic effect... Which might actually be quite fun to experiment with in a tucked away corner! In fact, after a little digging I've discovered there is actually a whole style of "gothic gardens" - this is a good starting point to find out more.

And finally, earthy colours include all the hues of brown and dark greens. This mostly appears only in foliage as there are very few brown flowers. As well the soil is, by definition, an earthy colour! Brown foliage can create magical effects when when lit up by sunlight.

_______________________

That's it for the time being. I'm going to hit publish at last on this mammoth post at last(!), although I know it's going to continue to grow as I learn. Any other hints and ideas are very welcome!

what I've learned about roses

Over the past few months I've been jotting down ideas from various gardening magazines, web sites and TV shows, as learnings for the future garden at Amherst. I didn't want to post them all individually, so have been saving them up till I have enough to warrant a full post on any given theme. Here's what I've picked up so far about roses.

Types of rose

This isn't an exhaustive list of every type of roses as that would take forever, but it covers the main ones I think.

The most common type of rose, the kind you buy in florists, are hybrid tea roses. They are the kind that are very fussy to look after and you have to prune so they look like little skeletons. They've been breed so much to focus on colour that they seldom have any scent left. Although the flowers are OK cut, I don't like this kind of rose very much as a plant - too finicky and quite ugly looking for most of the time. I don't plan on having any of this kind of rose.

Floribunda roses tend to have flowers growing in clusters rather than just one to a stem. Often they seem only to have one layer of petals. They are smaller but they look better in the garden as they generally have the most flowers. There's an even smaller kind that I think are called Patio roses are much smaller bushes, of a kind you could grow in a container. At the far extreme end there are miniature roses, which have been breed to be just like a normal rose plant except tiny, with tiny flowers. These would be good in pots too but I can't imagine them in the garden.

All these types of roses are modern. But my favourites, by a country mile, are the older kinds of roses.

Old roses, also called antique roses, are any class of rose that existed prior to 1867, which is when they created the first hybrid. They still have a wonderful perfume, far more than the modern varieties which were breed mostly for colour, although the downside is that they usually only flower once during a season.

Included in this category are species roses (ie: the kind that grows in the wild). My great-aunt has a hedge of something like this , she calls it Rosa Rugosa, and it's spectacular both when in bloom and without as it has these lovely huge hips that remain after flowering.

Also included in this category are my absolute favourite kind of rose, which is called a moss rose. Moss roses don't have normal thorns but instead an almost fuzzy covering on their stems of tiny thorns (but they don't hurt when you touch them). Other kinds are Bourbon roses and China roses which are apparently some of the few old roses which do have repeat flowering within a season, and Gallica roses which for some reason I just like the name of!

Shrub roses are the kind that I always thought were old fashioned, but apparently a lot of them are modern hybrids but bred to look like the older roses and with different goals in mind, like perfume. Examples are David Austin roses, which I've planted two of already in our backyard here... they're lovely and they look great in borders if you want a kind of wild, informal look. Also, it seems that shrub roses as a category is applied quite loosely so it probably encompasses any rose that grows in a shrub-like way!

And of course there are the climbing roses which grow very tall and you can train on a trellis. Like the other categories there are several classes within this including Rambler roses. These are basically climbing roses that are of an older type, typically with lots of small blooms but in large clusters.

This is a fantastic resource for finding out more about old and old-style garden roses including detailed info on specific kinds and their history...(thanks Wulf!)

Growing conditions

All roses need sun, and it seems that full sun is better for them than partial, but some roses are more tolerant of shade than others. This is a good summary of cultivars that do best in shade. Full sun means at least 6 hours of direct sunlight. Even the ones that are shade tolerant are not really... they still need at least 3-4 hours of direct sunlight. However, too much sun can be bad too especially if it's really hot because roses aren't particularly drought-tolerant. So, probably the best compromise is to plant roses where they get a reasonable amount of sun but not the entire day, and ideally with shade during the hottest parts of the day.

The hardiness varies by rose type and cultivar. I think, judging from this comparison of hardiness zones in US and Australia that Amherst is in Zone 2 in Australia which translates to zone 8 in the US. It certainly can get extremely cold at Amherst during the winter compared to most of Australia; we've been told down to -5, -10; but it's nothing like in the US with snow! The good news is that according to this in zone 8 we can grow pretty much any kind of rose. This makes sense considering that there was a famous rose garden in Australia created only about an hours drive from our property, at Bleak House in Malmsbury. It's now apparently been converted to a rose nursery, so I suspect we may eventually pay it a visit! I learned about it by reading "Garden of a Thousand Roses" which when the time comes to choose specific cultivars I shall refer back to since at least I can be sure that the ones it refers to will be available in Australia.

When you plant a rose, you should put them in deep enough so that all the stems are coming from below ground. But, if they've been growing in a container, don't put them in too much deeper than the soil level they've been used to. Also, it's good to double dig the soil and dig in a "dollop of muck" in the bottom of the hole, in the words of Monty Don! (Muck = cow or horse manure).

Good rose fertilizers have a ration of Nitrogen: Phosporus: Potassium of 1:2:1. More phosphorous leads to better blooming. If you add too much nitrogen you'll get too much foliage and not as many blooms.

Apparently the ideal soil for growing roses has a pH of 6.5 (slightly acidic) and is well drained with about 50 percent organic matter and the rest an equal mixture of clay, silt and sand. On a Gardener's World episode they planted a climbing rose on a patio in a container and used a mixture of "equal parts soil from garden, mushroom compost and peat free potting compost". That said, however, there are some kinds of roses that tolerate poor soil. For instance, Gallica roses in general are meant to be extremely hardy and "tolerant of poor soil and neglect" so I expect we'll have a lot of them!

If you're growing climbing roses against a wall, like for any climber that's going to live for ages and get big, you should build a strong frame in the beginning. This means use proper eyelet screws that you run wire through, and put a tensioner at one end of each wire strand so that it can always be kept taut. When tying in the rose, as with any climber, tie the twine to the support first, and then tie in the stem but not too tightly. Another good idea is to cross the twine once it was tied to the support, before tying in the rose stem in what is called a "figure of eight" knot... this helps cushion the stem and gives a little extra room to grow before it needs retying.

Also, you want to train climbing roses by curving the main stalk over, as in this picture. This way you'll get lots of blooms that cover the wall closer to the ground rather than letting it grow naturally upwards.

A good idea for climbing roses that are going to get very tall is to underplant them with smaller growing varieties of clematis. This way you still get some flowers at eye-level

Pruning roses

You shouldn't be afraid to prune roses hard as they'll throw out new shoots. But with old fashioned shrub like roses don't prune too much because you'll destroy their "wildness". You want to keep good air circulation around the plant so cut out any shoots that are crossing, etc. Update: Be careful with floribunda roses since the more foliage they have the better they grow, so don't prune them too hard.

When pruning, the first step is to remove any dead or diseased wood. Make a cut into healthy wood, close to a bud or shoot, which slopes so that water to run away from the bud (otherwise it can encourage disease). Choose also where you cut based on the direction that the new shoots will grow, to encourage a healthy shaped plant. The direction the bud is pointing indicates the direction in which the new shoot will grow.

Then, remove any other stems which cross or rub together. Again this is apparently to stop the spread of disease. I have some really old rose bushes in my garden here, I can already see some drastic action is required to address this in particular!

Climbing roses are also important to prune as if you don't they can easily get out of control with all the flowers at the top. Again, I know only too well about this... our climbing rose in London has gotten so out of control that Dave has scheduled a 'climbing rose massacre' for later this year. It will be good for the rose, but I think also Dave is looking forward to it as revenge... this particular rose has sharp thorns and he often gets caught by them; it has earned the moniker from him of "the b*stard rose"!

For old climbers which are overgrown the BBC suggests you do something called renewal pruning. Each year you remove one of the oldest and unproductive main stems, making the cut close to ground level or back to a healthy shoot. Then, you reduce all flowered sideshoots by about two-thirds of their length, cutting just above a healthy shoot or bud. Finally, where stems have grown beyond the bounds of their support, you should cut back to a healthy shoot or bud and then tied in to the nearest part of the trellis or wire.

Other tips for looking after roses

You can encourage ongoing flowering in those roses which have it by deadheading. You don't just take the flower part off, you also cut off part of the stem. The "1st node" is where the first leaf joins the stem below where the flower is, the "2nd node" is where the next lot of leaves joins. Cut just above the 2nd node. Also, when you cut, make it sloped towards the heart of the plant. I'm not sure precisely why this is but it's something to do with helping the rain get in.

Update: I just watched another TV show who interviewed the head gardener of the Royal National Rose Society in the UK. He said they'd recently changed their advice about how to deadhead. Apparently now you don't cut down to the 2nd node. Instead, there's a little swelling just before the 1st node where you can just snap off the dead flowerbud. Snapping off rather than cutting gives a clean break at the point which is best for the plant.

When watering avoid wetting the leaves as this can encourage diseases like blackspot. Blackspot is the most common problem with roses. As the name suggests it causes black splodges to appear on the leaves then they turn yellow and drop off. Supposedly if you catch this early you can just break off the infected leaves (and then burn them, don't put on the compost). Otherwise there are sprays... but I don't plan on using any of them. We have roses in our backyard here and some get blackspot but I just let them and cut off the worst parts. They've survived fine the past 5 years so obviously blackspot is more unsightly than life threatening!

If you underplant roses with plants from the onion family (e.g., chives) that will help to ward off aphids.

Supposedly, you should dig the soil every season, turning it over with a fork more than 1ft away from the base of the plant. Closer to the plant you're supposed to "loosen the roots" with a garden fork in Spring - not sure quite what this means, but I'm guessing stick a fork in and rock it about in a few places! This is to aerate the soil apparently. This sounds like an awful lot of fussing, I suspect we won't be doing this, but it's good to know! Instead I think we'll be relying on the worms to do the job of digging for us.

After pruning, it's suggested to give each rose bush several generous shovels of compost and checking to make sure the mulch is still several inches thick over the root zone.

My favourite rose cultivars - suitable for Amherst

As I come across new ones I shall add to this list so hopefully by the time it comes to choose rose plants I'll have a long list. I'm also going to be ruthless and limit myself only to the kind that will grow OK in Amherst conditions and without much pampering - because frankly, even though I like roses, I suspect I'm going to have my hands full just keeping the basics ticking over in the garden. Any suggestions welcome - please add them in the comments!

Rosa rugosa - this is the kind of rose that my Aunt Marion has in a hedge. The flowers are nice but the hips are glorious and what I love most about it. This gets huge, the hedge at my Aunt's is taller than me and around a metre wide. It can be pruned so it looks like a hedge but of course it's a little wilder than your typical box! There are different versions of this (see here) but my favourite is the one that looks closest to the species (aka wild) version - pink with a yellow centre and just a single set of petals, simple but lovely.

Rosa Alba Maxima - this is tolerant of poor soil and is one of the oldest kinds of roses apparently. It has lovely white flowers and grows like a shrub

Rosa Jayne Austin - this is one of the David Austin style roses. It grows quite tall (up to 7ft) but narrow so would be good for towards the back of a border. It apparently has wonderful scent and lots of repeat flowering. But, best of all, according to this it is extremely resistant to black spot.

plans for the garden

We're talking to Eric, our architect, in a few days to go through everything one last time before he goes away to work on (what is hopefully) the final footprint for the house. In advance of that we've tried to catch up on everything... here is the last outstanding thing, which are our comments on the garden outline from Prue. Prue is a garden designer who's helping us, because I figure we don't have time or money to make big mistakes... trees take too long to grow! We're still at the very skeletal stage at the moment in the garden design but it's good to be thinking about it now because it influences the views from the house. Everything is so closely connected at this stage. Anyway, if you fancy taking a look, here's a link to download it. It includes scans of Prue's outline design as well as our thoughts.

update on trees

From an email from Mum on May 7th: "Dad said all well, a few leaves burnt off - I think they had a frost a week or so ago. It was cold here, and -1 at Coldstream so I would guess it was colder up there. Still they have survived that OK. Some are now high enough to be about reaching the top of the enclosures. That is what Dad says - they were moving along nicely when I last saw them but not that high. Still it is a while since I went up there"

I can't wait to get the photos. Dad has taken lots and he has managed to get them off the digital camera and onto his computer... now he just has to do the last step and upload them! He's doing really well to learn how to do all this computer stuff considering he's only been online for around a year.

plants for the secret garden: part 1

OK, this is the last post for the night, then I think I have caught up except for the Vacola bottles... but that story is too good to rush!

Last week, Prue asked me for my ideal list of plants for the "secret garden", so she could think about the layout - most importantly, the kind of protection it would need from the elements and sizing.

Here's the list I sent her. I know it will change, and suspect some things are just total wishful thinking, but figured I may as well start with it all.

* Ferns
* Hydrangeas, underplanted with sweet woodruff
* Rodgeresia
* Japanese anenomes
* Helleborus
* Ligularia but only the kinds with tall flower spikes (e.g.,
Ligularia przewalskii), not Ligularia dentata that has flowers I think
look like weeds
* Great plants that have catkins in winter like wintersweet,
witchhazel (especially twisted branches)
* A plant whose name escapes me but it dies back to nothing in winter and then in spring resurfaces, growing foliage that looks a bit like a large maidenhair fern, with flowers on tall stems that are quite small but kind of droopy, look like little fronds of torn material. It was
really popular here last year and I've grown fond of it, we have quite
a few in our front garden in pale pinks and whites [UPDATE: I later remembered this is a variant of Dicentra]
* Clematis x lots
* Scabiosa (pincushion plant)
* Bulbs like crocus, bluebells, snowdrops, snakeshead frittilias - ie:
the more delicate woodland ones, not just blowsy daffodils!
* Moss - not sure if it's something you plant or a fungus that just
happens, but I love moss. We have whole patches of it in our lawn now that Dave is very protective of!
* And totally off the scale... gunnera manicuta if it's possible (aka
giant rhubarb, the kind that's big enough to walk under in summer but
that dies back to ground level in winter)
* Maybe even a camellia with pale colour / white flowers?

update on the trees

The trees we planted on our visit back last October are surviving, mostly, but with no thanks to the local fauna! I think the fruit trees were the worst hit... they were the biggest so easier to reach over the wire. It was Dave's birthday on Saturday and for his birthday present his Mum & Dad are going to plant a few replacement fruit trees for the few that have died. We've not done too badly though (she says, hastily touching the wooden top of the table) considering they've been for over 5 weeks without rain and watering only every 2 weeks. Just have to hope that the gum trees don't succumb to frost when winter comes, can't be too far off it now there.

Extracts from Mum's email - 24th March 2005
"Up there 1 or 1.15pm. Dad set to showing me the container (very good) and starting to work on the trees, for winter. I went off to visit as pre-arranged a lady on the genie email lists who lives in Carisbrook just the other side of Maryborough. I got back about 5 (having gone to butcher in Carisbrook, he is famous, and the bank and bakery in Maryborough) to water the olive trees and found Dad was only half way along them fixing the enclosures and had done nothing else. Almost all of them have been pruned by eager rabbits possums kangaroos sheep - one or several or all of them. The wire was up six inches from ground in some cases, floppy in others, not joined at the seams in some, bent and bashed, posts bent / knocked over.. so Dad was repairing them and wiring them down and.. he stopped that and went to do some gum trees (ditto for their cages) to let me water. The olives were very thirsty.. and some have the water run off straight away as they were not planted in a little ditch it seems. I ended up putting about 4 taps on on each line and letting them go for ages, very slowly. They got a good drink each I think. We left at 6.30 and had tea at Talbot hotel. Dad thinks - I agree - that as there is no green anywhere apart from the trees where we water, and no rain not a drop even for about 6 weeks up there, that the creatures want something juicy and green and so work harder to reach your trees. Still, all the olive trees are OK and those that have been well pruned are all shooting new growth. The gums look fine as you drive along too but I did not get a closeup look"

Prue's thoughts on the secret garden

Prue is the garden designer who's helping us... see here and here for background

I'd forwarded on Eric's emails to her, to get her input on the secret garden especially in terms of how it should be shaped, positioned, etc. Here's her replies:

Extracts from email from Prue - March 23

"I've been thinking about your internal courtyard and how it should be positioned. It almost appears that the courtyard needs to be designed first and the house and all the rooms designed around it.

(She went on to say that using the garden to tie the buildings together, as Eric suggests is a very good idea... but) I think part of the space could be active for sitting/ small entertaining/breakfasting in, and part be inactive for looking and contempating either from cloistered walkways or a conservatory.

A few thoughts...

It will need to be enclosed on all sides to protect the garden & plants from harsh northerly hot winds and summer sun, also in winter protecting all the plant from cold south westerlies and the frost.

It would also be good to have the option to be inside the courtyard but still have a bit of a view out across the surrounding landsape at some point within the courtyard. This could be done with a wall with window openings (shutters to keep it enclosed when needed) looking toward the north, or a glassed in walkway partway or completely joining two wings of the house looking into the courtyard on one side and out to the garden on the other.

Also perhaps a balcony overlooking the space, on the north or west side as this will cast a bit more shadow across the courtyard in summer eliminating some of the hot afternoon sun but still allow for morning sun in winter.

The inclusion of arbours/pergolas with deciduous climbers will also give protection in summer and light in winter. This could be over an active area

A conservatory extending into the space from a living area, or main bedroom.

A pond or water course that will increase the air moisture content while aiding in keeping its surrounds cool.

A breeze-way along a cloistered walkway. Breeze in the shade nearby to water acts as a bit of an air conditioner.

Recycling water, catching the water from the low side and pumping back up to the high side either for use as irrigation or for a water course.

Probably most importantly would be planting one or two very hardy deciduous trees to give an upper canopy to shade the hotter, sunnier spots in summer ie Gleditsia triacanthos 'Shademaster', or if possible a Jacarandah (they are stunning at christmas time but not too partial to frosts as a young tree)

As the site is on a slope, this garden can be built up to almost level (it would be nice to have a couple of steps either up to a deck or conservatory, or down to a cool shady area) therefor allowing for a generous depth of good growing compost and soil media. Also for its own tank for irrigation and pond which could be built under the house.

.....

A lot of gardening books on Mediterannean, Spanish and Moorish gardens show enclosed courtyards, cloistered spaces and secluded shady enclaves. Perhaps start with those. I also saw in a magazine a year or so ago, and can't remember if I bought it, a corrugated iron and timber house in some exposed area of either Australia or NZ that had a huge internal couryard with enormous rustic timber sliding doors that opened the internal to the external environment. It looked absolutely fantastic. It was all very minimal.

Even Japanese garden design is a good place to search for more ideas. They are big into internal coutyards. Although smaller and a different climate they give a serene feeling and can be replicated for your purpose.

I have also had a client in St Kilda who's house was built around an internal pond which acted as a tank and water storage (overflow and watering capabilities for the back garden). The kitchen living space was built around two sides while the bathroom and a bedroom looked in from the other. It was a lovely outlook from the living space, and functional.


Extracts from my reply - 30 March

I like the suggestion that the space could be multi-purpose, but I still want there to be parts that are quieter and contemplative, "secret". But, given it's going to have some traffic around it anyway, it would make sense to have an area for sitting I agree. In our brief to Eric we asked him to design in a whole lot of different
verandah-ey type areas, so we can have different ones by season, mood, etc.

I love the idea of letting the garden have a view sometimes... shutters would be nice(very Mallorcan!) but even better would be something you could open out / slide back / whatever so it's almost like part of the wall goes away, like in that garden you saw in the magazine. I'm not so keen on the idea of having glass walkways as I
think it might feel a bit too modern, but I guess it all depends on the execution; we could always build a verandah railing around it to soften the effect, or make it feel a bit like an Edwardian glass house. (I love the glasshouses at Kew, especially the littler one that grows all the gourds! Speaking of which, gourds are really cool, don't know if they're possible to grow there, I'd guess they need a
tropical climate but no idea really.... :-)

The balcony idea could work really well too, especially if we made it perhaps a bit more extended than you would normally expect (it could have pillars to hold it up. Then it could function as a climbing frame / gazebo type thing too.

I also like the idea of having a pond that doubles as water storage tank and borders onto some rooms... We could grow water lilies in it perhaps, plus the reflections would be very soothing. In fact, imagine having french doors from an inside room opening onto the pond itself, you could sit and dangle your feet in it!

In fact, I like all your suggestions! The challenge is just working out how to combine it with the house.

Eric's thoughts on the secret garden

The "secret garden" is my name for the garden area that I want to be somehow part of the house. An area that is not immediately on view when you arrive and that is protected enough (from heat, frost, wind, lack of water, etc) that I can grow my favourite plants from my garden here.

Here are some extracts from recent emails with Eric about this, because obviously it has a big effect on the house plan.

Eric's email - 10th Mar

"I've been thinking through the secret garden and believe I know why it is a struggle to visualize. I can imagine the space from within, but it's tricky to imagine how it fits within the whole of the buildings. Here is a line of reasoning that seems to be leading me in a certain direction:

The old house, as we agree is worth working with. It's long face is rotated about 30 degrees east of north. When designing for good exposure to sun (both summer and winter) we like to face north or within about 20 degrees of north in either direction. So the old house still has good potential for good solar orientation.
The natural slope of the ground is pretty close to due north east. For a building to sit nicely on the land, we often place it along the natural slope. So the new buildings may want to be rotated slightly to the east as well. Also, the main views are to the north and east.

In our climate, building generally like to be roughly proportioned in a 2:1 ratio shape with the long side facing north. This achieves a good balance of more north wall for winter sun and less east and west wall to reduce impact of summer sun. It is also possible to create a very thin building with fingers spreading out to enclose a variety of outdoor spaces. This general shape would be quite typical in the tropics, but in our climate would be inappropriate from a thermal efficiency point of view.

(Here's where it starts getting tricky)

A building of this type and size (and most of my concepts so far) will be around 12-15m long in the east - west dimension, and about 6 - 8m in the north - south dimension. With the 12 - 15m in length you can see the difficulty in using the one building to enclose the secret garden. The secret garden needs to be bound by two or even more buildings.

Generally from a climate and comfort point of view, the main rooms like to be on the north and east to take advantage of sun (and in your case, views as well) This puts service rooms along the south and southwest sides. There can still be glimpse views from main rooms to the south, but the main orientation seems to be toward the sun. I fear that if we have the garden firmly on the south sides with only minimal glimpses, rather than being "secret", it may be "forgotten."

(A brief tangent.)

We have assumed that the secret garden is on the south side in order to suit cool climate plants. I wouldn't mind confirming this. During summer, the sun comes mainly from the east, west, and directly overhead. A wall on the north side will have very little shading to a garden in the summer. However, a north wall will provide shade in spring / autumn (about equal to it's height) and winter (about twice it's height.) One query is whether the secret garden should be bound mainly on the east and west by main buildings providing shade and not necessarily as much on the east and west.

(An idea.)

If the secret garden becomes defined by several buildings, what about using the garden itself to tie the buildings together? It could be like a cloister that you walk around to get between buildings. Note the distinction between cloister and courtyard. Courtyards are active spaces with movement through the middle. Cloisters are quiet spaces with movement around the edges.

So, one thing I've been considering is a central garden enclosed on 3-4 sides by various building. But rather that being entirely secret, would be used to arrange and link the buildings. Movement would be around the edges and the centre could remain the secret with glimpses in and places to discover.

My reply -11th March

Hi Eric, thanks for this, I think I understand. I'm intrigued by the cloister idea, I think it could work, I just need to imagine it a bit more. You're right we don't want the garden to be so secret that it's forgotten! Maybe we could achieve a sense of having secluded areas by having a few walls within the garden itself, eg for climbers.

Your logic about what side the secret garden is on makes sense to me. But, I'm going to email this to Prue, because she'll be able to answer the question better than I can, and may have some ideas about the cloister effect too. I'll cc you on what I send. I'm guessing that the second storey might also help to add shade, depending on where it is? Overall, my sense is that if we can create somewhere that would
be "partially shady" in gardening terms, it would be about right for the kind of plants I need. It could even be fully shady... we can get creative with the placement of mirrors to bring in extra light into dark corners if we need.

RHS advice about growing potatoes

We were in a panic this weekend thinking we had to get some of the potatoes in the ground right away as they were sprouting (or chitting as it is apparently properly known. That was why we attempted to work yesterday even though it was so cold. But, great news... as I was researching how far apart we needed to plant them I found this: "Keep the trays of tubers in a cool but frost-free place with at least moderate light, such as in an unheated room. Direct sunlight is best avoided. Sprouts will form within a few weeks. The tuber is therefore ready to grow away as soon as planted. Tubers can be laid out to chit from January onwards, but planting should be delayed until March in sheltered and southern areas or April in less favoured districts. Earlier plantings can rot in the ground or the shoots can be frosted off on sharp nights. By this time the sprouts should be about 5cm (2in) long and dark coloured. Longer thinner sprouts are caused by excess heat or too little light or both, and tiny sprouts suggest conditions are too cold. If the weather is unsuitable for planting, tubers can be left to chit further, even into May, without too much loss of crop.
Although unsprouted tubers can be planted, the chitted ones benefit from their flying start. Early cultivars will crop earlier and more heavily if chitted. You can help the process by rubbing off all but the four strongest sprouts so that the tuber's energy is diverted into a few really strong shoots that form new potatoes as early as possible. Second early and maincrop potatoes also benefit from chitting but they don't need thinning of sprouts. Chitting later cultivars results in earlier foliage before blight or drought strike and they mature earlier and can be gathered before slugs damage the tubers."

Brilliant, means that we don't have to fret about planting them yet as it is still way too cold and also they only have sprouts which are about 1cm long.

We have 3 varieties we're going to try and grow:

ORLA: this is an Early kind which means they mature in 100-110 days from planting and you eat them right away as new potatoes. So if we planted at end March they'd be ready in late June or early July. Apparently we are supposed to plant these 300mm apart in rows 600cm apart. Their description from the Organic gardening catalogue site: "Has the highest blight resistance ever seen in a first early, plus resistance to scab and blackleg. The appearance and flavour are pretty good as well".

SANTE: an early maincrop, which I think means we can use it for either? Maincrop potatoes mature in 125-140 days and you plant them a little later I think. e.g., plant end April, ready mid-August. I guess if we plant it early they will be littler but we can eat them sooner, and if we plant it later and leave longer they will be bigger and better for storing. The description: "The most commonly grown variety on organic farms. A strong growing early maincrop with a reasonable yield. Resistant to white and golden eelworm and blight. Oval/round tubers with creamy yellow flesh."


CARA: a late maincrop, so I guess that means we plant early/mid May? These would be the ones that we store for winter use. "A well known household name. Stores very well and has good blight resistance. Expect a large yield of red eyed tubers with creamy flesh ideal for roasting and baking".

yabbies and olives!

Dave's brother Paul and his wife Denise went up to Amherst recently to check on the trees and give them a water. Here's pictures of Dave's pride and joy Olive trees, looking really healthy, and they even have little baby olives growing! Also while they were there they threw a net in the dam and found there were loads of yabbies. (Yabbies are kind of like a fresh water crayfish native to Australia)

update on the trees

Mum writes... "Jess and Tony went up this weekend just gone, with Paul and Denise, and had a nice time - all the watering done and think the lemon scented gums are in general doing magnificently. They think like us a couple of the fruit trees have gone,and that they are being got at by kangaroos. Loved the caravan. Had a nice day at the market too. Said some stalls were missing eg the olive man, but they got a box of tomatoes as the ones in our backyards will not ripen. The lady said cold nights will do that, as they ripen mostly at night"

Caravan at Amherst and update on trees

Email from Mum - 1st Jan

During the week, when Dad was at Amherst (I think it was Christmas night or maybe Boxing Day), he saw a caravan and annex for sale in the Talbot general store (read milkbar with a limited range of other stuff) window. 20ft it said for $2200. As the little 10 and 12 footers are now selling for $5000 secondhand, he was interested to say the least. Rang the guy.. went and saw it and gave a deposit, paid it off and got it Friday. the guy towed it up with his four wheel drive and installed it. For $2200 plus $100 for other bits and pieces they put in nad the towing etc etc it was dirt cheap. I saw it yesterday - it is round where the hobbit hole will be, so out of sight fromt he house. the van is all clean, and the lady who used to own it left in a set of cutlery, a dinner set, a doona, cover, two pillows and some pillowcases. It has a new electric wall panel heather, a gas stove with four burners and oven (which has not been used for a while, not this last set of owners) and a frig almost the size of yours. there are assorted shelves and hooks and towelk rails and mirrors on wall and a tv bracket on wall that can be seen from the main bedroom or swivelled through to the kitchen area. The van has served three families to live in whilst they built their homes.. walk in the door, slightly on left is the bunks with small cupboard like a bedside talbe at end and wadrobe at foot, then turn right a little and you are int he kitchen dinetter area, and keep going and you come to a double bed with robes and tiny bedside table. all walled off from each other, and there are curtains to hand=g to make it oprivate if you wish. good curtains on widows all mathcing - windows are louvre sorts, with fly screens - open them and there was a lovely cross breeze. good views.. and the annex is up. they put shade cloth over it too so the van stays cooler, no sun on it, and under those trees - it is where Dad had tried to dig out for the hobbit hole with a far too small machine. the bit he did is JUST the right size for the van and annex, JUST. I was tired, so lay on the double bed and read and snoozed whilst Dad watered the olive trees and the few others he had not watered earlier in the week. then I drove home whilst he slept. This morning we will go to visit Gran.

Dad says you have lost both apricots and a chestnut, and one olive has been eaten to a tiny stalk, but has put out a new leaf and has others forming, so he sealed the wire up again and watered it. The gums are looking really healthy and bushing out, as well as growing taller. But they look established now. all comment on them, how healthy they are. Olives too - the fruit trees though are still I think settling in. We will have to water more often than three weekly - so it will be two weekly, with Jess and Tony doing the next water. Dad has been up there enough on other missions so far that they have not had to go up more than that once when it was the market so was dual purpose trip. We went too that time.

There has been a little rain here and there - one deluge which helped though it was so heavy the water just could not get into the tanks fast enough, so we only got a small part of what fell. We got up there in the morning after it bucketed down up there and the gums were sitting in water filled holes! but generally there has been some rain between each trip, and it has almost replaced the water from the last watering session in the tanks each time.

tree watering system

The system that we set up when we were there takes way too long, so Dad is altering it so you can water more trees at once.

Email from Mum - 6th Nov

He said on the phone last night that we will be able to water 6 trees at
once, and that to do that will take 15-20 mins depending on where they
are. Gums and fruit, that is. So, about 90 divided by 6 = 15, so
aboutr 4 hrs if we count it as 15 min.

Olive trees - two at once, so 15 lots of watering to be done there -
about the same time as the rest.

Personally, I still think the bucket by each tree, with a little hole in
it, with if you like a hose from it going to the roots down the plastic
pipes, would be much quicker. Tow that blue bucket along on the
trailer, one drive, one tip a bucket full into the stationary bucket,
and it would all be done in an hour or two. Ie each tree would have
it's own mini tank which we would fill each time we went. However, I
agree it is more physical work, and Dad was trying to minimize that
especially for Jess and Tony. I might even cart a bucket of water from
the dam for some of the nearer trees, pur it directly down the plastic
pipes and cut down a couple of those 15-20 minute bursts. I would
probably do the fruit trees that way, and some of the higher up gums -
they will be the ones which will take the 20 minutes as higher on the
hill. I think, anyway. Dave has a point about the friction slowing it
down the further it goes.

Another email from Mum - 7th Nov

Dad is still at Amherst, and will spend tonight and tomorrow there. the watering system he first tried was still no good so each tree now will have (ie will have, after tomorrow) it's own tap and hose. It has cost you more I am afraid Lyn and there is hire of the trailer for another day. that is the shed which needed the hired trailer.

It rained off and on with cold wind all the time he has been there till about 3pm today - and Sat and Sun it rained non-stop apparently. Dad is wet and cold and has a sore throat etc which is only to be expected. He was ringing from Talbot - I said go stay in the motel - but he said the house is fine and he is not cold up there. He will wake when it is light in the morning and put in the last 60 taps, fix the wire that has come up from ground on some trees as it will let in rabbits and the foot high hares he saw today, tie down the tanks so they do not blow away when empty, and put another 9 blue tubs of water into the olive tree tank (880 gal only instead of 1000 like the others - it is shorter so easier to hand fill by bucket)- he does three per trailer load, backs the trailer right in dam so it makes it easier to fill. He has the four wheel drive of course up there and it can do it. He had to go into Ballarat today to get the extra pipe and taps for the trees...

Email from Dad - 25th Nov

I feel we will most likely be connecting the dam tank to the lower section sooner than later due to using 500 gal on the first day of watering the lower 100 trees. That job will cost a little, but is a must if rain doesn't replace between waterings. We used only about 150 gal for olives on this first water. So the 800 gal filled with the 4wd truck using 4 tubs a haul and taking 2 hours is a very practical solution for this summer. But the connection will need to be made in 11/2" pipe like the other tanks connection to the irrigation system (the white pipe). That is a pressure pipe, and will he able to hold pressure from a pump when that linkup is made later. But we must wait and see how much the cloud bank can contribute to the summer stock. We began our watering with completely full tanks, and have put texta marks on the tank to create a history for reference later.

Rain and update on trees

Mum emailed yesterday to say that Amherst had about 15mm rain cupday apparently. Dad also just rang, he was at Amherst today and it had rained all but an hour or so and the third water tank was nearly full again. The dam also has more water. The trees are all doing well except for one of the chestnuts which hasn't flowered.

Tree-planting

We've just got back from 3 weeks in Australia during which we spent 5 days in Amherst planting trees! It was a marathon effort and we couldn't have done it without everyone's help, so thanks to everyone who came. (Especially since I
had the flu for several days so was not much use) Saturday and Sunday were the biggest days, and Saturday night we had a BBQ by the stove and gazebo that Dad had built. The evening was finished off with fireworks, but the photos from that didn't work out unfortunately.

Here are a couple of photos




We planted around 120 trees in total - 70-plus lemon gums to line the
driveway, 30 olive trees up on the hill, and 15 fruit/nut trees as the
start of the orchard. We could only plant the most hardy kind of
trees this trip which could largely look after themselves, so we put
in 2 chesnuts, 5 persimmons, 2 apricot, 4 plums (two kinds)and 2
mulberries. I can't wait to seem them grow! It's brilliant also
because now it feels like we've started.

Despite how small the trees are at the moment, each one required a
huge effort to plant. After the hole was dug by the post hole
digger/tractor thing, the sides had to be chipped in so the roots
could spread out. Then we had to add compost, watering pipes, plant
the tree then lots of mulch. Then we hammered in the stakes (3 for
most, 4 for the bigger trees) and cut and tied wire around them to
protect from kangaroos, sheep, etc. Finally the finishing touch was
tying a square of shadecloth to the lid of each enclosure to provide
protection from frost (which usually hits by sinking down from above)
and also the sun this summer. Then the watering system... laying out
the pipes from the water tank, connecting the taps, digging the
trenches to bury the pipes for the parts cars might drive over.

We started on Thursday, marking out where each tree needed to go.
Friday and most of Saturday was drilling holes and driving stakes.
Planting started Saturday afternoon and continued until Monday
morning, as well as starting the wiring and irrigation system. Monday
afternoon and Tuesday morning were spent finishing the wiring and
attaching the shadecloth. So thanks again to everyone who helped, we
owe you bigtime.

Saga of the star pickets

As part of the preparations for the great tree planting event (!) Dad is sourcing the materials we need. Each tree needs a guard around it to protect from kangaroos etc. Dad has come up with a design which requires using 3 or 4 star pickets for each tree. We considered several suppliers but eventually decided to get them from a nice man in Canberra who Dad found via a classified listing...it turned into quite an adventure!

Email from me to Chris Ward - 12th Sept
My Dad saw your ad on the allclassifieds site and asked me to get in touch to find out more. We are going to be planting about 100 trees in October and need 3-4 pickets per tree in order to build a protective fence around each tree to stop
kangaroos and sheep, etc. We're wondering if your pickets would be suitable.
How tall are they? Are they totally plastic, or are they metal coated in plastic? Would you consider splitting them and only selling say 400 rather than all 700 together? And finally, my Dad lives in Melbourne - are you willing to arrange shipment or would they need to be collected in person?

Reply from Chris - 12th Sept
They are all plastic, but very strong. They do sometimes break if they
are hit by a mob of large cattle at speed, but for sheep and kangaroos
they are perfect. We have used lots on our farm near Canberra to
protect individual trees, but since we have moved from sheep to cattle
we have reluctantly decided to go back to steel. I am sure we could
find a way to get them to Victoria, and yes, I can easily split the
posts. I have attached some information I downloaded a couple of years
ago when I bought them.
starposts.doc

Email from Dad - 13th Sept
I think you won't find a better deal for your longterm needs. I would buy as many of the pickets as you could afford, especially if they are 1.8 metre ones. I couldn't open the file attached even though I clicked often on it. It is a lot of money, but these things would cost more than steel ones, and for your purposes are more useful. Cutting them into shorter lengths is very much easier for starters, and they are safer around stock, as you can use them with electric fence for larger things as cattle and horses. Pickets are considered temporary style of fencing, and
flexible. Care to remove these intact is needed, but moving them about to accomodate your needs ought not to be a problem.. Remember that you will need to direct all sorts of animals, but when you have horses, these will be safer for your more or less permanent fencing about your garden areas because they will snap off if charged and not cause goring injury as likely as the steel ones. Whatever we do, we must plan to have safety matters in mind as well as other matters. Making channels about the place with post and rail fences is the safest way of directing horse traffic. That is for the future, and not now. Try to buy as many of these as you can afford, although I wish I could have opened the file so I could know more about
them. It is a lot of money, but so are the trees, when labour is factored in. They are worth their weight in water and shade once grown, and they are imperitive if you hope to enjoy a life there. When they are big in 5 yrs time, or sooner, the pickets will be used again to protect other such developments. I assume they are fully UV ray proof. Love Dad PS If he delivers to the railhead at Talbot, I could collect from there. Or if the rail is at Clunes, or whereever. They will hold such things for a short while.

Dad's email to Chris - 13th Sept

Hi, I am Lyn's dad and will be following up on the many preparations for her
visit to Melb in Oct, in about 4 weeks time. She needs to plant many trees,
and give them a chance to grow while amongst a flock of sheep, and having
regular visits by roos, and rabbits. I put up some wooden pegs, just garden
stakes, and many were knocked over by sheep because I couldn't drive them
into the hard ground deeply enough. I think the plastic ones you have may
be okay, but I couldn't open the attachment you sent to Lyn, and she sent on
to me. She is presently at work so I will continue this dialogue with you.
I think there is a rail head at Talbot or Clunes, but have to check on that
today. Obviously we need to decide if they are suitable first. What length
are they, are they like steel star pickets in that there are a range of
holes to receive rail wires for future use. I have pointed out to Lyn that
a picket which breaks off at the ground if a horse should charge it in a
panic could be an advantage. She will not be fencing a horse paddock with
such things, but will be riding all about the place on a horse in years to
come. Goring injuries by star pickets are very nasty. If you can reply asap to me today I would be thankful. Are all the pickets the same colour? Are they deteriorated by UV rays?

Chris's reply to Dad - 13th Sept

John, I have put the attachment in this email - hopefully you can read it. I haven't seen any sign of UV deterioration, and other than that they are plastic they are just like an ordinary star post - holes and all. The ones I have are black.

I just drive them in with a normal post driver - I sheared off about 6 or 7 out of about 300 in pretty rocky country. I run horses in a couple of paddocks and haven't had any problems with them at all. With cattle they seem to flex up to a certain point, and then snap cleanly at the base if put under extreme pressure. For horses, I would certainly prefer them to steel for the reasons you give. I am jammed in court for the rest of today, but should be free after 5.

Dad's email to me - 13th Sept

I have contacted the Meredith nursery site, and the tree guards they have
are unsuitable in the extreme. I contacted a firm specializing in
reforestration and revegetation and they have a plastic guard and something
like the nursery ones, a place called Tree Max or something like that. Not
suitable here. I contacted the place whose address you got from the Weekly
Times, and they have a lightweight metal garden stake for $2.50 same height
as the plastic star pickets, 1650mm, but he said if a sheep leaned on one it
would crumble easily. Not nearly as suited to reusability as permanent
fencing.

All the pickets Chris has are black, with holes just like the metal ones, so
can be "built-into" the rails of a permanent fence, a very critical point.
Downside is if a forest or grassfire goes through would probably burn,
though may not. No mention was made of this by the attachment info he
included. That considered, and the safer use around horses, I would see you
putting up permanent fencing with post and rail, and using these pickets for
partitioning paddocks and sheltering areas from stock as we are doing with
the trees, but on a more fencelike manner when more of your lanscaping is
done. Your water tanks, even galvanized, are not fire proof. But insurance
cover would fix these shortfalls. The price is very good if compared to the
normal retail price, but as you can get steel ones for $3.14 each the
difference is only 64 cents so I feel you should tell him you would buy all
from him if the price were $2.00 each. If $2.25 each only saving 89 cents
each, so cost of cartage means is not so good a deal. I am very taken with
the idea of plastic for safety, and with ease of cutting. Not so good with
the fire risk. So that is that. The place where you got the good price
from the Weekly Times is in Spotswood, near the Westgate bridge. He is
waiting for delivery of a container of the 1650 mm pickets, and would hold
the 400 pickets for us to pickup when I take the Jackaroo and trailer up.
The trailer for your car is there already. Dawn will leave your car at Jess
and Tony's, and suggest that Tony might drive it to pickup you at airport if
he is going to have difficulty fitting in all luggage. I plan to mount a
good packrack atop it before you arrive. I found a beaut on the roadside
castoff collection about 6 months ago.

I will contact Vic Rail about cost of shipping the plastic picket to
Melbourne. Please advise me soon as to your choices. I can get 1500 wide
roll of 25 mmx.9guage, the lightest,chicken wire 50 metres for $95. The
pickets are priced at $3.14 but must add GST so they are actually $3.46
each.

Summary: cost of steel pickets, which I will collect enroute to Amherst: 400
for $1384

Cost of plastic pickets: 400 for $1000. Must find out cost of freight.

Summary of my judgement: I would not hesitate to buy all 700, especially if
he will bring the price down to $2.25 or better still $2.00 each plus a fee
for delivering them to a railpoint for freighting here. The 25 cents saved
on 700 pickets comes to $175 so you could factor in $50 for him to deliver
to the place. Probably just settle on him delivering free and getting a
price off of 25-30 cents for buying all 700. You won't regret having the
pickets, but it is all money spent and you may not have it now. The big
cost item for the tree protection is obviously the pickets. Oh I forgot,
the roll of shadecloth comes in 1800 width and I forgot to get a price and
length of each roll. Love, Dad

Another email from Dad - 20th Sept 2004

I only just got to sleep today and Chris rang to tell me he was sending the pickets. He said they were going to only cost $75 and would be delivered to my doorstep tomorrow sometime. Hooray! The timing couldn't be better. I am getting cluttered here and will take the chance presented by Jen going to visit Gran this weekend to go to Amherst with the big load of pickets, leadlight, and stove. I must go late Sat night to beat the traffic, and because I have to be here for Mike and Margaret at Dawn's house for my birthday. So I will have a very full week. Next week I will be doing a big work time at Amherst, and not see you until at Amherst on Friday, most likely. Now the weather is our last concern, and guess what? We have had a day of 25 degrees today, and the prospect of spring weather continuing gets better and better. I have to study now, so will stop here. Oh, the reason I thought to send this message now- Chris said there have been 35 enquiries for his pickets. He is keeping the remainder for use on the farm. He has agistment of cattle, and when they have been spooked and charged the fence, it has collapsed at the ground level and not caused permanent damage to the beasts. So we have truly been fortunate to get these pickets when we did as the interest must have been delayed from when we contacted. Love Dad

Dad has fixed the dam

Update, Dad has now fixed the dam

Email from Mum - 20th August 2004

Dad came back last night - he was too late Thurs night to hire that night so he had to go back to Ballarat in the morning for the back hoe or whatever it was he hired. They taught him how to use it and the guy teaching him did all the dams in the region, so told him how to fix it - how Dad was going to do it was not the right way. And he got it done. Said at one stage he sort of forgot how to drive the thing and pushed the wrong lever and it sort of went up - he did an action like a rearing horse - and as he was balanced on the top of the dam at the time, it could have been nasty. So he said he told himself he had better concentrate! The man said it should have a trench dug too (I think for the overflow), but no time for that, so he said put stonesand rocks on top., which Dad will do next trip - which will probably be when you folk are there. So that is something to be added - make like a rampart on top of the dam.

He said last night he will put the old firestove in my garage as he has taken the pot bellied stove up to Amherst for you and it will do the heating - and we can cook over the open fire which has a big BBQ hot plate over it. Fair enough I suppose. In all this we are talking open air, with eventually a roof like a carport and a side fenced in to break the wind. It might even get the two adjacent sides half fenced in to make an alcove. It would be horrible to be there and have no windbreak even if there was a roof! All of this will be removed of course when you get other things done - it will not be needed.

the trees have landed (at Mum's place)

Mum collected the trees from Prue. Then Mum and Dad along with Dave's parents potted them all up in a marathon potting session the next day.

Mum's email - 7th August 2004

All lemon gums now potted on. 80 as predicted. They look nice and
healthy.

5 persimons, two chestnuts (different varieties Spanish chestnut "Flemings Special"... and Chestnut, "Flemings Prolific".) and two Moorpark
apricots I think is about it. They are all now in 12 inch pots. All
looking good. We have masses of potting mix left over. And blood and
bone and Osmocote of various types.

Prue is looking out for quinces and apples and some other nuts right
now.

The search for trees

We want to plant a lot of trees at Amherst when we're there and so need to organise suppliers well in advance. Here's a collection of emails relating to that:

Email from me to Prue - 4th July 2004
In terms of getting trees, I found a nursery that seems good and looks
reasonably close by: http://www.meredithnursery.com.au/about_us.htm
Have you heard of them? I've emailed to ask about getting hold of
tubes of lemon scented gums for when we're back, plus to ask if they
know of any local contractors etc to help with planting. I figure if
we can arrange for the lemon gums to be put in by someone else
(assuming it doesn't cost an exorbitant amount that is), it'll free us
up to work on other parts when we're back, like putting in other
specimen trees, marking out the terracing layouts etc.

It turned out Prue hadn't heard of them and after a couple of email exchanges and phone conversations with Meredith Nursery it turned out they weren't going to be able to help. (Their stock of lemon gums were too damaged, and they got a bit grumpy with email correspondance... didn't seem to realise that the alternative for us was to stay up really late to call them. So we decided to go elsewhere)

Prue's email about trees - 12th July 2004

I had actually started enquiring into the trees. I spoke with my dad to find
out through the man (Stuart) who planted his hardwood plantation where to
get trees and if there was anyone in the Amherst area that would plant
trees. He has given me a contact in Boort. So I will contact them. There are
a couple of growers of native trees in and around Melbourne that I will try
also for sourcing the trees. Stuart plants trees for Land Care, farmers,
govt and Greening Australia and to give you an idea how many trees he can
plant he said he and two others planted and put tree guards around 1500 in a
day!That was with good soil preparation. He strongly suggested to rip the
areas to be planted (with tractor and ripper or discs or plough) kill the
weeds with herbicide and deep water before planting. This will reduce the
mortality rate. He also suggested that they be watered as often as possible
(every couple of weeks) during the first summer. This may be a little
difficult but it will help the survival rate.Is it possible to get the
ground prepared prior to planting?

My reply - 13th July 2004

I'm sure it would be possible to arrange for soil preparation. I had
a look on the ballarat.com services guide to Talbot and there were a
couple of local people listed who seem like they might do that kind of
thing - e.g.,
Bruce Adams (backhoe, bobcat, soil, gravel, etc) - phone 5463 2344
Bond Cartage (backhoe, bobcat, soil, gravel, etc) - phone 5463 2295
Also, apparently one of our neighbours builds sheds, dams, etc. I can
get Dave to call the guy who owns the pub, as he'll know who it is.

The only slight hiccup would be that we haven't precisely marked out
where we want the driveway to go yet... but perhaps that is something
we could do when we're back rather than planting the driveway trees,
if your Boort contact comes through. I just want to make a start and
plant at least a few trees myself, that's all.

major reworking of garden plan

I made a flying visit to Australia at end June to see my Gran who was very ill, and while there I managed to go see Amherst. This was my first time at the property in person and to my relief it was wonderful. Really green, far more so than I'd expected, so I was very happy. However, it turned out I'd totally misunderstood where the gas pipeline was, so that Prue's plan for the garden doesn't work.


Email to Prue on my return home from Australia - 4th July 2004

While I was there I managed to get a few hours at Amherst, in the late
afternoon of my first day there. To my relief, it's wonderful. I
think it helped it had rained quite a bit so it was all very green,
but the slopes / layout of the land was better than I'd expected too.
There's only a very small part that's flat, and gentle rolling rising
to a slightly steep peak on one edge. But all is workable. Also,
there weren't that many rocks, I'd been envisaging it almost like
gravel, but it wasn't that at all. And the rocks there are, on the
quartz outcrop, are a lovely rose-pink colour. The house is a wreck,
which we knew, but it has good vibes so we can restore it. The dam is
huge and was filling up.

However, after having seen it in person, unfortunately we have to
change the design. For two reasons... first, parts of it won't work
with the lie of the land, eg the lake would look silly as it's not in
a natural spot for it. But more importantly, there is a natural gas
pipeline running under the land which is an easement - we can't build
anything, including planting trees for 20m around it (10m either
side). We knew the easement existed but for some reason had thought
it was way over the other side of the block. Turns out we'd got it
upside down and it runs almost right past the front door of the house!

Don't worry though, I don't think it will stop us having an amazing
garden, we just have to reorient it. When I was at the block we took
some more precise measurements (give or take a metre or two). So I've
now drawn up a map which has the positioning of the house, dam, and
existing trees near the house more accurately. Also, we've made a
start at reworking the plans, using your original design as
inspiration. There are still a lot of blanks, but I wanted to show
you where we'd got to so far, and to see if you had any ideas for how
to fill it in.

Here's some pictures of the plan:











Some of the things that I've changed - but obviously very flexible
still so if you think any of it wouldn't work, or you have better
ideas, let me know.

* Allowed space to extend the house. There is only the one direction
we can extend it, so even though we don't know yet exactly what it
will look like, we know roughly the area it will occupy

* Changed the layout of the driveway to match where the entrance is.

* Drawn in stables, hen house etc. The stables in particular need to
be in the area where they are on the map so that the roof will face
the right direction to catch the most sun (as we're going to put the
solar system on there), plus so that the roof is facing away from the
house - so the panels are largely out of sight. We figure too there
will probably be a garage between the stables and the house, but
haven't worked out precisely that bit yet.

* Added in a terraced planting section, around the part that gets
steepest to the back right of the house, because it just seemed like
it was crying out for it. Then building on that we totally rethought
the pool, so as to put it in a spot where it gets views with the
terraced section as a backdrop. It also means we can put the pool on
the other side of the easement, and have the easement area as grass /
etc (e.g., for cricket, boules, etc) between the pool and the house.

* I haven't drawn in the lake with jetty, as there is really only one
spot that it could go, which is in the distance to the far side of the
property. It would give a great outlook and I'd still like to do it
but I suspect it will be one of the last things we do because of the
cost, plus because it will cover the best grazing pasture on the
block. (Speaking of grazing, there were about 30 sheep on it, and
there was loads of sheep / cow / roo poo everywhere that I'm sure
would help to improve the soil if we ploughed it in). Instead, to
satisfy my water craving, I've allowed for two mid-sized ponds in the
main part of the garden which cycles water from the dam. I even
planned in for a little pump house next to the dam, as I figure it
will need a bit of machinery to make it happen!

* I've combined the meditation pond / gazebo thing with the summer
house / reading room, with the idea of having a cabin thing that is
partly on land and partly on stilts protruding into the bottom pond.
I saw this done once on a DIY show and it was gorgeous. It seems like
it would combine my desire for a jetty (where I could dangle my feet
in the water) with all the other things.

* Planned in a vegetable garden with 3 brick walls and the other with
a wire or wrought iron-like fence facing the driveway, positioned so
as to get the maximum amount of sun. The other reason for having the
3 brick walls is that it will allow us to put a shadecloth or netting
roof over it if need be. Then I drew in the orchard in the section
leading down to the summerhouse just because it felt like it suited.

* We've scrapped the idea of the tower. We might build a treehouse or
little cabin instead, on top of the quartz outcrop, but that will be a
later stage thing. Given the land is so sloped anyway we won't need
a tower to get a view of the whole garden, we'll just go to the top of
the terraced section.

initial tweaks to the garden plan

After we'd done some more thinking about the plan, we had a few more ideas...

My email with initial tweaks to the plan - 2nd June 2004

Last night I looked some more at the design, and I still love it.
It's taken me a little while to digest, when we met I was just blown
away by the thought of it, it suddenly seemed to have moved a step
closer to reality! Now I've thought about it some more though, I do
have a few tweaks I'd like to make. Given that we have to rework it
anyway to move the driveway, would you be able to make these other
changes at the same time? If you disagree with any of them, let me
know, as you're the expert, but thought I'd ask anyway.

* Could the hothouse be bigger, say double in size. The compost area
can just be shunted sideways further

* Could the stable be bigger. Also, could the ducks have a separate
house from the chooks, down near the lake, as I figure they will want
to swim on it. The chooks it makes sense to keep near the house so
it's easy to collect eggs in the AM, etc, but the ducks don't need to
be. Eventually my hope is that they would go slightly wild and
free-range anyway

* Near the tower perhaps, could there be an outdoor picnic / BBQ area?
e.g., it could be a kind of room made of trellis that we could grow
plants up and over for shade, and perhaps the BBQ might be on the
bottom floor of the tower. Perhaps one side of the tower could be
solid, and thus a wall we could use to project films onto (Dave has
this great projector that we use here in London to project onto the
wall of the conservatory, but it'd be even more amazing outside).
It'd be nice down there near the lake. Not that we'd use it loads,
but still it'd be nice. We might even make the tower square, with a
proper enclosed room at the top, ala Sissinghurst, then it could be a
guest room. :-)

* Was the path near the petanque lawn where you've drawn the lines
across the part you were thinking of having trellised? If so, that's
brilliant. Could we extend is also along the rest of the path, near
where the olives are at the moment?

* In terms of the olives, could they be moved to behind the herb
garden, perhaps running into the orchard? That way Dave has room to
plant more if he wants. Also then I can use the bed where they
currently are for flowers.

* I love having the herbaceous border near the house. I just wanted
to check, how long will it look good for? Is it possible to plant it
so there'll be something nice to look at in almost every season - or
at least spring, summer, to mid-autumn? If not, then perhaps the
herbaceous border could move to where the olives are currently and I
could plant a different kind of border there. Or perhaps I just want
something that gives the effect of a herbaceous border but is
technically mixed. :-)

* Just so I don't forget it, could you mark a small pet cemetery area
out near the clump of trees in the distance? Not that we'd
necessarily build it right away, but it'd be nice to have it on the
plan.

And now here are two potentially more difficult changes...

First, I don't know the shape of the house yet, and I won't for
certain until Sept at the earliest when we see it. But, one thing for
sure, it's going to be larger than what's there currently, since I
want it to have a minimum of 2 bedrooms and I want the rooms to be all
quite spacious. All the plans I've come up with so far involve a
similar shape externally, it's just the rooms inside that change.
I've attached a jpg showing this, do you think you could adjust the
garden plan around it? There are verandahs all the way round too,
except on the side near the driveway. I'm really sorry, I know you
asked me for this ages back, but it's taken me a long time to come to
it. I hope it isn't too much of a pain, I think it just means pushing
the pool, etc down a little, and making the patio areas with the big
tree a different shape. Then, in the gaps between the old house and
the extension, that could be a garden area, with a part for
ferns/hydrangeas/etc, perhaps even tucked under the new extension
depending on the slope? The other side of it could be storage - for
tools etc, which'd be nice to have them handy to the garden areas.



Second, I would really like to have a big lavendar/yarrow/sage bed. I
figure it's the kind of thing that would take care of itself and
thrive out in the hot sun. I don't mind where it is, I had some ideas
- e.g., maybe near the stone maze, or maybe along the top side of the
driveway as you came to the house?. The effect I want to get is like
in the attached picture.

Garden plan - 1st pass

Prue came to London for the Chelsea garden show and we met up with her for a drink on Tuesday 1st June. It was great to meet her in person and have a proper chat, although unfortunately I was really busy at work so couldn't stay for lunch like I'd hoped. Anyway, we had a few drinks and a chat and she showed us her first draft of the plan. It's amazing how well she'd managed to fit in everything we asked for. There were a few things to tweak, like the driveway was in the wrong place, but aside from that our initial reaction was that we loved it. :-)

wishlist for the garden

To help Prue, we wrote a wishlist of things we did and didn't want in the garden at Amherst. It was quite amusing to do as well as more helpful in a pragmatic way than the dream photos!

Things that we want

BBQ area with a permanent table and space for an umbrella/shade cloth. Also there should be a roof over the BBQ area

Bar area (not necessarily near the BBQ area but it could be)

Quiet reading / meditation area

Petanque playing area where it won’t matter if the grass etc end ups with lots of bumps

Small swimming pool inside a secure brick walled area, so we don’t have to have dorky looking pool security fences. Swimming pool will not be very big and no more than 8 ft deep at the deepest part and it will have steps to get in. It will be around 8 metres long by 3m wide. There needs to be space for sun loungers etc alongside. Also, I would like it to feel secluded and not necessarily entirely in full sun in all places (e.g., it would be good to have trees overhanging in some parts and we’ll just deal with the hassle of leaves). Ideally this would be near to the BBQ area but they would be distinctly separate areas

A pool house, ie: a kind of building that is near the pool that has a place to store towels, get changed, put away deckchairs when it's out of season, etc etc. I don't know what this looks like yet, but there needs to be a space planned for it in the section of the garden that has the pool.

A rotating summerhouse. Ideally this would be like a room with french doors, etc that we could use as a writing or reading or painting room, that would sit on a base and rotate so it could face in whatever direction we wanted. They have them here so you can rotate to follow the sun; that might be good in Australia in the winter, but I expect in summer we would probably be turning away from the sun to keep it cool! Ideally this would be positioned somewhere that there would be a variety of views from different directions to make the most of the flexibility, maybe at one tip of the property up on the hill? You can get them here in ready-made kits. e.g.,
http://www.source-antiques.co.uk/summerhouse.asp (this company say they ship all over the world)
http://www.scottsofthrapston.co.uk/downloads/gazebos.pdf

Cricket net, which also could be inside a walled area. This needs to be about 30 yards long and 10 yards wide at a minimum

Space to play croquet if we are having grass. This doesn’t need to be a formal posh croquet lawn but just a space for informal games

Lake, preferably with a little jetty to sit and dangle our feet over or a very shallow entrance bit we can line with pebbles for wading in. I don’t want it to be muddy at the bottom and I don’t want the water to be brown. Ideally the lake will have some waterlilies

Dovecote, which could even be a full-blown dovehouse you can walk into. Even if we can’t get doves in Australia perhaps we could entice some other friendly birds to stay there.

Tree seat – ie: a big tree somewhere that we can build a circular seat around

Potting shed

Lean-to style greenhouse in one of the walled gardens

Old fashioned style cold frame things

Vegetable garden

Steps in some parts of the garden

Herb garden in the broadest sense, so this can include even odd herbs like in a physic garden

Camomile seat or bench

Feeling that the garden is actually an outdoor house, with a series of rooms, each individual, differently sized, but which lead from one into the other with multiple entrances and exits

Decorative fish pond that we can keep a few pet koi or goldfish in. This needs to be well shaded. In fact I love ponds so the more ponds the better

Use of small fountains etc to create a calming and cooling feeling but not formal fountains… more things like water trickling down a wall, etc

If it is at all possible, I would love to have a bog garden even in just a small part. I figured the only thing would be perhaps in the sewerage recycling bit where it will get a lot of water and fertiliser?!! Or perhaps I just have to bury a pool and plant into that. I like those prehistoric looking bog plants, and things like gunnera manicuta (sp?).

Lots of shade trees which are tall enough to walk under

Use of trellises to add height e.g., using grapevines, kiwifruit, passionfruit etc to act as a roof in some areas

Outdoor lounge room area, with lots of space for lying around on cushions, with a central fire pit. Also a wall that has a flat section that we could project movies onto

Orchard area which has lots of trees with spring blossoms even if it doesn’t give us fruit

Shady woodlandy feel section, even if it is small, because it will be a lovely cool place to retreat to in the heat of summer

Long walk which has trellises etc for things to clamour over

A garden that looks different in each season, or at least some sections of it do

Native plants scattered around the garden rather than there being a special “native” garden for them

Patio area around the house that has shade

Pathways around the garden that are barefoot walkable, and pathways where there is shade, at least dappled, for getting around in summer because I don’t like the heat and I sunburn easily

A place for chickens and ducks to live

A proper serious composting area

Space for a blowsy herbaceous border in the old fashioned sense but on a manageable scale

At least a few places where you can sit to get views down the sweep of the paddocks. One of these could be possibly a tower or tree house?

Sweeping driveway which has symmetrical plantings for at least part of the way

A paddock or two so we can have pet sheep, cow, horses as well as a barn for them

Use of things like mirrors to create interesting perspectives in the garden. Also surprising places e.g., plinthes, alcove to display sculptures, little pot plants, etc

An old fashioned lamppost like in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe buried somewhere in the midst of the garden

A herb lawn (e.g., thyme/wild oregano/etc) that you can lie on in the sun when its hot and which is fragrant, like at the cemeteries at Gallipoli

A cemetery area, ideally with wrought iron-like fence where we can put ourselves one day as well as pets

A swing that is strong enough for adults to use; ideally something like a tyre swing that hangs from a tree

If it is possible a small fernery (e.g., perhaps we could create a grotto like area for them where they had shade?)

Flowering meadow

Mini-olive grove


Things that we do not want

A tennis court

A formal rose garden that looks skeletal and clipped within an inch of its life for most of the year. I like roses but old fashioned roses that you don’t prune, that just grow wild and clamour over everything. I don’t like roses all grouped together without anything else around

Formal gazebo stuck out in the middle of nowhere as if it’s the main feature. We want the plants to be the stars not the structures

Gum trees with that horrible harsh brown thick craggy bark, or at least not very many of them

A separate kids play area

Giant boulders scattered around

Things that look plastic

Concrete in wide swathes (but it is OK if it doesn’t look like concrete)

Woodchippings

Anything that involves a cupid or dumb statue

Overly modern, stark feel

Overly quaint “English romantic” feel

Topiary figures

photos of garden things I love

As part of pulling together a brief for the garden design for Prue, we've put together an album of photographs of garden features and planting schemes that we liked, which you can view here: http://www.ofoto.co.uk/I.jsp?c=ghiijyl.963ct6x&x=0&y=1f1zun

There are 208 photos in total, and if you view them on the fullscreen rather than thumbnails I've put in the description what the particular thing was that I liked about them. Below are my favourite photos in which I love absolutely *everything*, to give you a flavour:

soil test results

These are the results of the soil testing which Dave's parents did, with some help from Mum and Dad





Overall, the pH seems to be between 5-6, so slightly acidic, although not as bad as I was expecting. The other minerals are worse than I'd anticipated though... I guess it just means we have to do a lot of preparation of the soil in advance; but in the scheme of things it's not impossible.


The tests were done after about 5 years of low rainfall, so all the soil was very dry. After clearing, the land was probably used for grazing, and at testing, grass was dry and sparse to very sparse. The soil is a grey to reddish brown loam
In most areas there is 20 to 30cm topsoil with small to medium sized quartz fragments on the surface or in the soil. The area called up creek and down creek was probably a shallow gully which was filled over the years with soil washed from the uphill forest area. The top soil here is at least 30cm and is a fine dark grey loam with an absence of quartz fragments. This area supports the greatest quantity of grasses. The ph tests showed the creek soils to be slightly acid probably relatred to the humus content and overall the creek soil would be the easiest to cultivate and probably the most fertile.

email minutiae: initial discussions with Prue

I made contact with Prue via the contact form on her website, then we had a series of email and phone conversations as per extracts below.

Prue's reply to my initial contact - 9th March 2004

Thank you for your enquiry regarding garden design for you Amherst property. I have had a look at your photos and the property looks blissful, a world away from life in London. It certainly has potential for creating a beautiful garden.

Some ideas to begin with would be the need for water by way of a large dam to support the needs of the house and garden. It will also have significant ornamental value. The establishment of larger trees to create structure, height and shade is important, while being mindful of retaining views across the paddocks and to the state forest. From here finer details of 'garden rooms' and levels can be created and installed. A long term project, but all good gardens take time to create.

My suggestion would be to talk with you in order to get a feel for your desires for your Amherst property and also for you and I to see if our ideas and personalities are aligned. We can also discuss the approach to the design and the fee structure. I look forward to hearing back from you to organise a time to talk.

My reply - 9th March 2004

Thanks very much for the initial ideas, they make total sense... and don't worry, I'm under no delusions about this being a long-term project! I should also say upfront, I don't know how normal this is for your clients, but I'm keen to be very involved and hands-on. For me the opportunity to create a garden is the biggest reason for buying the property in the first place and so I want to feel like I have a big hand in that creation because otherwise it would be giving up on part of the experience. But, I think it's foolish to attempt to do something on such a grand scale without guidance, even if it is just someone who I can consult to stop me making silly mistakes. I'm by no means an expert gardener and I have no clue about gardening in Australian conditions. When we lived in Australia I didn't pay any attention to gardening...it was only here, around 5 years ago when we bought our London flat, that I started and was almost instantly hooked. Now I would say that gardening is a passion that I can't imagine being without.

At one point I was considering taking a course in garden design - e.g., the English Gardening School in Chelsea offers correspondance courses. But I gave up on that since I didn't want to turn gardening into "work" because I didn't want to risk it stopping being fun. However, I bought the textbook and have read 2/3rds of it so far...so I have some idea of how to start, but a theoretical understanding from reading is very different to that borne of practical experience! I had been just going to start off on my own and see how far I got, but then I came across your website while looking for info about dry gardening in Australia, and thought I'd get in touch.


Following this we had a long telephone discussion and I also sent Prue links to some photos of gardens we'd visited over here...

Prue's reply - 16th March 2004

Thank you for all the photos. It has made me want to visit England again in a hurry to see all the beautiful gardens. Thanks also for the photos of your garden. You have definitely fitted a lot into a small space. I have sent you through some photos of my garden, the first few are 'under construction'. It is looking much more lush now. I'll send you through some updated ones soon.

I have looked through all the information you have sent regarding Amherst and will print off copies of some of the site maps in order to start the design process.

Some plant and nursrey sites to look at are www.flemings.com.au, www.dandenongs-online.com.au, the Yamina Rare plants site, www.rankins.com.au for roses, www.pga.com.au for perennials, www.dinsan.com.au for general plant lines, www.larkmannurseries.com.au for perennials.

Hope that keeps you entertained for a while. I look forward to receiving further info from you regarding your likes & dislikes in plants/gardens etc, and any other info you come up with.

My long reply... so excited to be starting! 16th March 2004

Thanks very much for your proposal. The only thing I would say is do you have any idea how long something like this might take, just so I get a rough idea of how many hours might be involved (and hence total cost)? I think I'd like to go ahead but am worried about embarking on something totally open-ended for which I have no idea what the end cost will be. Even just a ballpark estimate would help. Also, in terms of the research... if you are thinking of visiting Bendigo, Castlemaine, etc... you are very welcome to visit our property too. It's not far from Maryborough, apparently that has a botanical garden and is a really nice little town. Also, if you want to combine it into a nice day out, I just found there's a farmers market in Talbot (5 mins from our place) between 10am-2pm on the 3rd Sunday of each month, starting March 2004 (ie: it's just started). tel: 03 5463 2008 if you're interested in finding out more.

In terms of the research, I will definitely help as much as possible, I'm pretty good usually at tracking things down online. I've been combing through my gardening books here and picking out pictures showing the kinds of things I like. Dave, my husband, is helping me scan them in. Once they're scanned I'll load them up onto the ofoto site so you can see them. It may take us a week or two though to get through them all as there are quite a few, so if you can wait till I send them to do anything more then it might save time in the long run. There is a wide range... I've only been through half the books so far and already have photos of pools, lakes, vegetable gardens as well as various garden borders, etc. I figure if I gather them all together you'll get a great picture of what I'm looking for, better than me explaining it just in words. My problem is that I know what I want in terms of the jigsaw pieces, I am just struggling to work out how to put the jigsaw together, which is what I'm hoping you can bring.

One of the books that has been brilliant, that I'll copy loads from for you, is "Natural Planting" by Penelope Hobhouse. I picked it up cheaply a few years back at a National Trust shop and it's full of loads of wonderful things. From reading that I learned about "new-style" borders, apparently a concept coming out of Germany / Holland. The idea being to naturalise perennials and grasses in plant communities so that they are self-sustaining and thus can be maintained with minimum labour. They have a wonderful wild look to them, so if I can get that with minimum labour then why not!! :-) They showed pictures of it from Westpark in Munich, is that where you worked? Apparently the guy who started this is called Richard Hansen at his Weihenstephan garden (which I've never heard of but maybe will go visit at some point). He has a book called Perennials and their Garden Habitats which was published in English in 1993 that I'm going to try and get hold of. Also, I discovered "Prairie-style" gardening from the US, some architects called Ohme and Sweden? (or something like that anyway).

Once I've done the pictures, I'll then turn to getting hold of a list of plants. At this stage, I'm thinking I will split them between those that will grow OK in the local temperature conditions (split into subsections depending on soil/water requirements), and those that won't necessarily but that I absolutely adore so that maybe we can explore a way of creating a microclimate that suits them, even if I have to cover a section of the garden with shadecloth in the summer to stop plants getting scorched! Actually, I'm hoping there won't be many in this latter category, if any, but we'll see. I can check out from the nursery links you sent whether they're available or not in Australia. Hopefully there won't be too many that aren't.

A couple of final things I was researching yesterday, that I'll just throw out as ideas at this stage... we're right near a forest, and our property was I think one of the ones that got decimated in the 1985 bushfires that destroyed Amherst / Talbot / etc. Hence, I think it would be wise to factor into the landscaping ways to reduce bushfire risk. I've just ordered a book from CSIRO that was released a few months ago which is called "Landscape and Building Design for Bushfire Areas"; hopefully it will arrive in a week or two and then I will summarise the relevant bits for you. However, one of the things I've picked up though from just looking at the CFA website is that having a green lawn is actually an excellent firebreak! Which then got me to thinking... since there is no way I'll have enough water to have a real green lawn other than a small patch, I wondered about artificial grass.

Please don't cringe, that was my initial reaction too. On the one hand I hate the whole concept, the artificialness, but on the other, if it looks real, feels real, helps out from a bushfire perspective (not to mention being easy to maintain and helping to catch water) then maybe it is worth considering? From a little digging around I found it's something that has just started in the US in terms of targeting residential property owners, because they've had so many problems with water there recently too. There are a couple of companies that claim to be able to make grass that you can't tell, from touching it, whether it's real or not. (other than the fact that it looks too perfect). They are http://www.synlawn.com and http://www.astrolawn.com and http://www.sprinturf.com). Now none appear to have distributors in Australia yet, more's the pity, but a lot can change in 5-10 years. The only one I found in Australia is http://www.superlawn.com.au but I would guess they're still not as realistic looking as the latest from the US. Now, who knows what happens to this fake lawn in a bushfire... does it burn, if it does, what does it do?... there are loads of things that might make it totally unsuitable, even aside from the issue of aesthetics, but I thought I'd just throw it out there as an idea anyway.

Extracts from Prue's response - 17th March 2004

I was thinking about plants suitable for Amherst climate and thought I would type a list of plants categorised 'highly, moderately and suitable under good conditions' for you to then look in to.

I have been thinking about how to structure the design process so that it fits into a workable budget for you and I to work with.

Primary stage -designing the overall view and structure of the garden
Initial consultations/research and concept design, detailing open areas,rooms, garden styles, pathways, structures etc in the garden (8hrs)
Site visit (2hrs + travel)
Structuring water and irrigation for the house and garden (3hrs)
Research, selection and positioning of trees/ major plantings (2hrs)

Second stage -attention to detail of plants and features within the garden
Research, select and detail understorey plants suitable for certain styles (5hrs)
Listing and detailing perennials and smaller plants suitable (3hrs)
Details of features, focal points and structures (4hrs)

This is an estimate of the time needed to create the design. The primary stage will be what we concentrate on perhaps for the first six months or so. The second stage we could spend a little bit of time looking in to but not as important at this stage until perhaps you have been home, or planted and established trees, structure, shade etc. It may be handy to have lists of understorey plantings for certain areas of the garden as a part of the first stage.

I know a landscaper who has been installing artificial grass as lawns, but mainly for backyard putting greens for enthusiastic golfers. He may know of some products other than the really fake looking stuff. In a fire the fake stuff melts as it is synthetic. I think lawn would be better if we can store enough water to water it. My parents live in southern NSW where they have had drought for quuite a number of years. Their little bit of sanity, and safety, when all the paddocks were dust bowls was to have green lawns around the house. They however do have irrigation although during the past 1 1/2 years they have had no water allocated to them for irrigating and have ahd to pay huge prices to get the water to fill the house dams and tanks. I think you might be relieved and thankful to have green lawns around the house.

Climate and rainfall

This is a link to climate information for Talbot, which is the nearest measuring station to our property. Unfortunately they seem to have stopped measuring it in 1920 but at least it's better than nothing! Based on this it appears the average rainfall is around 550mm. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_088104.shtml

The next closest place with information about climate is Maryborough, and this has been updated right through to 2003. Based on this it appears the average rainfall is around 530mm. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_088043.shtml Whichever you go with, the rainfall isn't much.

email minutiae: soil testing

Extracts from various emails to Mum 6th/7th March 2004

I think we need to do a separate sample for each acre or so. According to the CSIRO website there can be dramatic changes of soil even within a single paddock. They showed a pattern where you take samples along grid lines... it's not perfect but is a million times better than taking just one sample and assuming everything around it is the same.

I ordered a pH soil test kit from a garden website in Australia and it's being sent straight to Dave's Dad. It says it can do between 20-40 samples. I spent over an hour searching for kits for the more advanced tests, like for nitrogen, etc and could only find really expensive ones in Australia (where you have to send samples off to labs), so instead I ordered kits from Queenswood's UK online shop. They too are being shipped to Dave's Dad, via airmail. I bought 5 of the advanced test kits (which includes 4 separate tests, including a test for nitrogen). Each of the kits does 5 samples so there's enough for 25 of them.

I don't think it will take too long, at least I hope not... Actually from reading the instructions I think you don't even have to do the tests on-site, e.g., you could just dig out the samples, put them in labelled plastic bags so can see where they appear on the grid, then could do the tests at home. If it made it easier, perhaps you could all stay up there overnight e.g., there's a B&B cottage at the winery with 2 rooms. We could pay for it as a thankyou for doing the tests.

Don't worry, I know it will need loads of water, but that's why we have to be very clever about recycling water... every single bit must get re-used. Also, we will need to invest in improving the soil to make it better at storing and retaining water, as well as investing in having a place to store it. In a sense, we have 30 acres to collect water over, to use on 10 acres.

Because of the water situation, that's why it can't be a straight English style garden, we have to plant things that are suitable for dry areas and can withstand drought. However you can do an awful lot, eg: one of Edna Walling's gardens I saw a picture of is up in Goulburn, that's pretty dry and has been stricken by drought, yet they've managed to keep that going.

It makes the planning doubly important, as the climate isn't going to do us any favours so we have to be really clever about how we get round the problems it creates. There is a lot I can learn from gardens in Spain and Italy, they have a pretty dry climate, and there were many English gardeners who retired to Spain and Portugal and created gardens there too. We are going to try and visit some in the next few years. Also, I've been doing a lot of reading, and have bought several books about dry climate gardening, xeriscaping, etc etc. It's a big deal in the US, especially California with their recent water problems, so there's a lot written. Also, Beth Chatto in the UK has written some useful books that give me hope.
e.g., http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/075281642X/ref=sr_aps_books_1_3/026-3497574-5529207

I have to believe we're going to find a way of doing it, and Dave promises me we will, because the opportunity to build a big garden like that is one of the main motivators for buying the block in the first place. I'd hate it if I had to have a dreary dust-prone paddock around me and no garden, in fact I wouldn't, I wouldn't live there. Just because others might choose to do so they probably have a different set of priorities and aren't prepared to put in the creative and physical effort plus financial investment to make it possible.

detailed article about understanding and managing soils

Here's another article about soils and climate, it's part of an online book for people new to farming. Unfortunately I can't find the link anymore but it came from a Victorian government site http://www.nre.vic.gov.au
_________________________________________

Natural resource management deals with the physical management, retention and enhancement of resources such as soil, water, vegetation and wildlife. As a small property owner, you need a clear understanding of the natural resources on your property and the importance of conserving and managing them. In addition, the small property owner needs an appreciation of the natural resources in the catchment in which he or she resides. Any action that will affect the natural resources on the small farm is likely to effect other aspects of the catchment in either a positive or negative way. For example, soil erosion on your property may create turbidity in a local stream affecting the aquatic values of that stream.

Assessment of your resources will help determine such things as the most appropriate place to site your house and dam, and the selection and management of a suitable agricultural enterprise. In other words, understanding your natural resources will allow you to assess what your land is capable of achieving without risking the natural assets on your property. This will also help maintain the value of the property.

The components in this chapter will provide an introduction to natural resource management but to enable effective natural resource management, a Whole Farm Plan should be completed. A Whole Farm Plan will provide you with a physical plan of what your property should look like to provide for long-term natural resource management. The Plan will also provide you with goals to work towards in developing the property.

Land classes and land capability

Land everywhere is not the same but varies due to a number of factors including soil type and slope. How the land is managed will depend on the type or class of land therefore, the classes of land on a property need to be determined. Your property is likely to have several different land classes. These are determined by the physical features of an area, such as:

Climate - average annual rainfall and the spread of the rainfall, average maximum temperature in summer, average minimum temperature in winter, frost frequency & wind

Topography - angle of slope, aspect, local drainage

Soil type - including soil texture, chemical fertility, physical structure and depth of the soil.

Land capability is an assessment of the ability of an area of land to continually and sustainably support a particular land-use, at a given level of management and production. The capability of the land varies according to and within a land class.

Climate, topography and soil type can combine to cause wide differences in land classes over short distances. The number of different uses possible on a land class decreases with decreasing land capability. For example, an area with poor soil, short growing season, and steep slope would have low land capability and few possible uses. An area with fertile soils, plentiful rainfall, and flat topography, would have a high land capability, provided it did not flood, and could support a wide range of uses.

To obtain further information about land classes and land capability, contact your local office of Department of Primary Industries, or Landcare group. Climate, topography and soil, the main components of land classes and land capability will be discussed in more detail below.

Climate

Temperature, rainfall, wind, humidity are aspects of climate that are crucial to any farming enterprise. Climate in Victoria varies greatly across the State and is predominantly determined by altitude and distance from the ocean.

Rainfall reliability - Just looking at the Average Annual Rainfall can be deceiving as it gives the impression that the average rainfall is what can be expected. However, rainfall is very variable in Victoria causing both drought and floods. For example, in the Parwan Valley near Bacchus Marsh the lowest rainfall on record is 230 mm in 1967 whilst the highest rainfall on record is 800 mm (1970), and the average 500 mm. A general rule of thumb for rainfall variability is that once in every five years rainfall will not be as expected. This may be either wetter or drier. Droughts can be expected on average every 10-15 years.

Drought - Drought is very much part of the Australian environment. Your home and agricultural enterprises need to be managed for the advent of drought. Recent significant droughts have occurred every 10 or 15 years (1967, 1983, 1995, 2002). Chapters 4 & 5 discuss management against the risk of drought in more detail.

Flooding - Flooding in Victoria occurs at irregular intervals and may result in stock losses and damage to other assets such as fencing and sheds. Your local Shire and neighbours should be able to give you information on how flood prone your property is.

Temperature - Temperatures tend to be more extreme away from the coast ie colder overnight temperatures in winter and hotter day temperatures in summer. South of the Divide, temperatures are generally more moderate and evaporation rates are lower due to higher humidity as compared to north of the Divide. Central and northern Victoria by contrast has hot summers with an evaporation rate that exceeds rainfall, while winters are much colder. Frosts are more common as you move further inland. This is an important consideration when choosing your agricultural enterprise as frosts can effect stock, pastures and crops. Some areas of your farm may also be more frost prone than others. Cold air sinks to the bottom of valleys and depressions resulting in a frost hollow.

Wind - Cold winds prevail from the south and southwest in winter while in summer strong hot winds come from the north and northwest. This should be a major consideration when planting windbreaks. (Discussed further in Chapter 5.)


Topography

Slope and aspect are components of topography that effect the capability of land.

Slope - Steeper slopes cannot be cultivated and therefore are unsuitable for cropping and make pasture renovation more difficult. The greater the slope the greater the velocity of water that can run off hills which increases the likelihood of erosion if slopes are unprotected. Soil depth varies with slope. Soil at the top of a hill is generally shallower than in the valley. Hills are generally more suited to grazing and tree planting whereas valleys are more suited to crops except in flood prone areas.

Aspect - The direction which the slope of a hill faces (aspect) influences the soil. Shallow, stony, weakly structured soil is found on dry exposed northern slopes, in contrast to deeper well structured soil on the southern aspect. Northern slopes generally provide better winter growth due to direct exposure to the sun while southern slopes produce better summer growth due to less exposure to the sun which extends the growing season.

Soil

Soil, the thin layer of weathered material on the outer crust of the earth, is one of our most valuable assets. Physically it provides support, water and air for plants, while chemically providing the nutrients essential for growth. Soil needs to be managed appropriately and utilised within its capability otherwise degradation that will effect productivity and other natural resource components will result.

Soil is a mixture of 5 components: Mineral particles, Organic material, Living organisms, Water and Air.

The mineral components of soil result from the weathering of rocks over tens of thousands of years. Mineral particles are described based on their diameter; Gravel -particles larger than 2 mm in diameter, Sand - particles between 0.02 and 2 mm in diameter Silt particles between 0.002 and 0.02 mm in diameter, and Clay - particles less than 0.002 mm in diameter.

The texture of a soil is the proportion of sand, silt, clay and organic matter and is a way of describing a soil. Approximately 20 texture classes can be described but the most common include, sandy loam, loam, silt loam, clay loam, sandy clay and clay. The texture of the soil can vary between the topsoil and the subsoil, eg a sandy loam topsoil over a clay subsoil. Large changes in texture between the topsoil and the subsoil can lead to water drainage problems. The texture of the soil is an inherent property of the soil that cannot be changed and therefore management strategies for particular soil types need to be developed.

The physical structure of soil is as important as the chemical status of the soil. Sand, silt, clay and organic matter are able to cement together to form aggregates. Soil structure is the number, size and arrangement of soil particles and aggregates. A good soil structure consists of many stable aggregates with spaces in between.The space (in between known as macropores) allows for rapid movement of air and water into and through the soil (drainage) and allows for good plant root growth. Water is held for plant growth in smaller spaces within the soil aggregates (micropores). Well-structured soils allow for good water infiltration into the soil and therefore minimises the risk of soil erosion.

Poorly structured soil on the other hand has few aggregates and fewer macropores. Without sufficient macropores between the aggregates, rapid water and air movement does not occur. Water therefore does not move easily into the soil, resulting in waterlogging on flat country or water run-off on sloping country. Water run-off increases the risk of soil erosion. Root penetration into these soils is very difficult resulting in poor plant growth.

The structure of the soil can be adversely affected by management practices such as excessive tillage, tillage when soils are too wet, as well as compaction from vehicles and stock.

There is a suite of good information on assessing soils for their structure, ranging from developing your general understanding of soils, to a detailed examination of soils found on the property. Ultimately you could pay someone else to do the testing, however you can do the same tests yourself at a greatly reduced cost and all the while further enhancing your understanding of the land that you have invested in.

Agriculture Notes and Landcare Notes (http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/notes) are a series of free information sheets that provide brief information on a wide range of land use issues. These free information sheets are available from the Department of Primary Industries website or any office. Alternatively, you may be interested in carrying out some of the simple tests yourself. A step by step guide is detailed in the Centre for Land Protection publication 'Know Your Soils'. This is a no fuss, common sense approach to explaining and carrying out common soil tests. For those who are keen there is the 'Land Classing Kit for Farmers' that build on the simple soil assessments with the aim of developing a Whole Farm Plan. Both the 'Know Your Soils' and the 'Land Classing Kit for Farmers' may be purchased from;

The Manager,
Land Evaluation Unit
Centre for Land Protection Research
Phone: 5430 4444

Organic matter

Organic matter is an essential component of good soil health. Organic material consists of dead and decaying plant material, animals and animal products. It contains most of the nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and many other nutrients in the soil. It also provides food for soil organisms and helps to bind the soil together. Water holding capacity, airflow, nutrient availability, infiltration and soil organisms are influenced by the amount of organic matter. Management, such as excessive tillage, can decrease the amount of organic matter in the soil, which can have detrimental effects on the structure, and the nutrient status of the soil.

Soil life is a good indicator of the health of the soil. Soil provides a home for a great variety of organisms including bacteria, fungi, algae, nematodes, slugs, earthworms, termites, ants and millipedes. Management can effect the number and type of organisms living in the soil.

Soil Chemistry

Plant nutrients
Nutrients are essential for plant growth and are provided by chemicals that are held in the soil. Some soil textures such as clays and loams hold plant nutrients better than other soils such as sands, therefore the nutrient holding capacity is dependent upon the texture of the soil.

Table 4. Nutrients found in each of the groups.

Macronutrients (required in large quantities)
Nitrogen (N)
Phosphorus (P)
Potassium (K)
Calcium (Ca)
Magnesium (Mg)
Sulphur (S)

Micronutrients (required in small quantities)
Iron (Fe)
Manganese (Mn)
Copper (Cu)
Zinc (Zn)
Boron (B)
Molybdenum (Mo)
Cobalt (Co)

The quantity of nutrients required by plants varies and is divided into macronutrients (those required in the highest quantity) and micronutrients (those required in the least quantities).

Macronutrients are required in large quantities while micronutrients, essential for plant growth, are required in smaller quantities. Imbalances in any of the nutrients will result in reduced plant growth.

Removal of produce from a paddock takes with it nutrients that were once in the soil. To be sustainable, nutrients exported through produce need to be replaced. Exported plant nutrients can be replaced through fertiliser. Generally the nutrients most often required to be added by fertiliser include phosphorous (P), potassium (K), sulphur (S), molybdenum (Mo) and zinc (Zn).

Nitrogen is the soil nutrient required in the largest quantities by growing plants and can be supplied by growing legumes which are able to biologically transform nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form that is available to plants in the soil. Legumes include clovers, medic, wattles and the bean and pea plants. By combining legumes in pastures or in crop rotations, nitrogen can be added to the soil without the need for nitrogen fertiliser in most circumstances.

The majority of Australian soils are relatively infertile with nitrogen and phosphate deficiency being very common. Indigenous vegetation, having evolved with these soils, has adapted to these deficient soils, however, introduced pastures and crops will need the addition of fertilisers.

Soil pH

The pH of the soil will also have a strong influence on nutrient availability to plants. Soil pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of the soil and is measured on a scale of 1 to 14. A pH of 7 is neutral, less than 7 acid and greater than 7 alkaline.

The pH expected to be found in soils ranges from 4 to 9. As soil pH changes, certain nutrients are less available to plants while other elements become toxic. For example, in soils with low pH (acid), nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca) and molybdenum (Mo) are likely to be less available while aluminium (Al) becomes more available to such an extent that it can be toxic to some plants.

The pH of the soil is an inherent property of soil but can be affected by management. Agricultural production has an acidifying effect on soils and therefore soil acidification is becoming a major problem particularly in the higher rainfall areas of southern and eastern Victoria. Lime will increase the pH of soil (make it more alkaline) and will be required on soils when the pH becomes too acid if productive agriculture is to continue. Generally speaking an application of approximately 3-3.6 tonnes/hectare will be needed to raise the pH measurement by 1 unit. Plants have different tolerances to soil pH and should be selected to suit the pH of your soil.

Soil depth

The depth of a soil is a major determining factor (along with soil texture and structure) as to the quantity of water and nutrients that can be stored for plant growth. Plant growth on shallow soils is limited by sufficient water storage and therefore shallow soils are often not viable for agriculture.

The best way to observe soil horizons and therefore the depth of soils is by excavating soil pits. Whilst a sufficient pit can be dug by hand, soils that are more difficult to work with may require the help of a backhoe etc.

Soil types

Parent rock material (geology) is a strong determinant of soil types, however, climate, topography, biological activity and time have all contributed to the types of soils found in Victoria. Victorian soil can be divided into 6 broad groups.

Deep Sands - these sandy soils are usually located along the coast and in the Mallee. They are relatively infertile. Mallee sands are alkaline whilst coastal sands are generally neutral to acid.

Alluvial Sediments - these are associated with the flood plains of streams and have a high degree of clay deposited during floods making them generally fertile. Many of the red clay soils north of the Divide fall into this category. They vary in pH depending partly upon their age and rainfall.

Sedimentary and metamorphic soils - clays, silts and sands depending upon the parent rock. These are often shallow and stony soils found along the Great Dividing Range. If derived from mudstone, soil will be silty clays or loams. They are often low to moderately, acid.

Wimmera plains soils - Deep well-structured cracking clay soils deposited when parts of Victoria were influenced by an inland sea. These soils are alkaline and show good fertility.

Basalt soils - Can be red or black in colour showing neutral pH. Black soils are often stony and display seasonal cracking, which can cause problems with buildings and drainage during wet periods. Red basalt soils have good structure and moderate to high fertility and are prime agricultural soils.

Granite soils - Range from deep coarse sands to sandy loams over medium clay soils. They are generally low fertility with steep areas being very prone to erosion. Waterlogging can be a major problem on granite soils. These soils generally are acid to strongly acid.

Victorian Resources Online (VRO) is your gateway to a wide range of natural resource maps and associated information. You can access this information at both Statewide and Regional levels across Victoria. The VRO also provides access to the Victorian Soil and Land Surveys database. This Directory comprises over 100 bibliographic records of Victorian soil and land surveys, dating from early this century to the present day. The Victorian Land and Soil Survey database can be accessed at http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/vro. You are able to search the database by either keyword, shire or Catchment Management Authority area. This will result in a list of soil survey publications, including maps being generated. Publications can either be ordered from the DPI bookshop or viewed at DPI libraries.

Assessing Your Own Soils

Even though soil tests cost you money initially, they may save you money in the long run. A failed dam wall, which may cost thousands of dollars to repair, could have been avoided with appropriate soil testing. Equally unwarranted use of fertiliser is costly and may damage the environment. Soil scientists and engineers use different ways to test soils for different purposes. The type of activity you want to carry out on your property will determine the type of soil test you require.

Engineering Tests

Engineering tests are essential if you are planning any engineering works such as building a house or dam construction. Your local shire will tell what types of tests are required for particular works. Remember you may require a planning permit for many works around the property such as dam construction. Tests are done through geo-technical consultants listed in the Yellow Pages telephone directory under consultants. Dispersion testing, linear shrinkage, ribbon tests, liquid limits and test for fine and coarse sands are all available. Costs vary depending on the type of test required.

Soil tests for engineering purposes:
DAM - dispersion test, linear shrinkage, ribbon test
HOUSE - liquid limit
SEPTIC TANK - coarse sand


Agricultural Tests

Soil tests can be carried out for different agricultural activities. A soil test kit can include an assessment of soil type, structure, nutrition, electrical conductivity and pH as well as including interpretation of the results and a set of recommendations. This usually costs between $60-$110 depending on the number of tests included.

Soil augers for sampling for agricultural tests are available for loan from your local DPI office. Soil sampling kits with instructions are also available from DPI. If you are not near a DPI office check with your local fertiliser supplier to see if they have test kits and soil augers.

If you cannot locate a soil auger you will need to improvise when sampling. Using a shovel is possible provided that sampling is done very carefully. All samples need to be taken to the same depth, usually 0-10 cm and sample the same volume of soil from each depth. Sampling should cover at least 30 different sites across the whole paddock in a zigzag pattern. Instructions are available in test kits. Many firms offer a soil analysis service. Check your local Yellow Pages telephone directory or DPI Office for soil testing companies.

Do it yourself!

Laboratory testing will tell you a lot about your soil but may not give you all the answers for successful management. Topsoil depth, compaction, porosity, soil life, texture and crusting may vary across your property. So why not get a shovel and dig a few holes around your property and assess your own property.

soil tests

As part of the gardening planning it's important to test the soil so you know what you're dealing with. Here is an article from http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/farming/smallfarms that talks about simple tests you can do:

Small Farm: Soil physical properties - texture and structure
Carole Hollier, Rutherglen
September 2003

Soil is made of varying amounts of silt, sand and clay. The proportion of these components determines if a soil is a sand, loam or clay or any combination of these. Soil texture has a number of implications for management because it effects the ability of the soil to hold water and its ability to withstand cultivation and compaction.

It is easy to assess texture in the paddock by mixing a small amount of soil with water in your hand, just enough to form a slightly sticky ball. The way the sample feels in your hand and the way it forms a ribbon, allows you to determine the texture.

Sands - Won't form a ball. Forms a ribbon less than 10 mm. Feels very sandy and not sticky at all. Clay content 0 to 10%.

Sandy loams - Able to form a ball. Forms a ribbon 15-25 mm long. Feels sandy and slightly sticky. Clay content 10 to 20%.

Loams - Forms a smooth ball, ribbons to 25-40 mm. Feels slightly sandy and moderately sticky. Clay content 20-30%.

Clay loams - Forms a smooth, plastic ball, ribbons to 40-50 mm. Almost no sandy feel. Distinctly sticky. Clay content 30-35%.

Light clays - Forms a smooth, plastic ball, ribboning to 50-75 mm. Very sticky. Clay content 35-45%.

Medium to heavy clays - Forms a smooth, extremely plastic ball. Ribbon more than 75 mm. Feels very sticky with no sand. It is more difficult to mould than light clay. Clay content greater than 45%.

Soil is comprised of three-dimensional arrangements of solid particles and pores. Soil structure is determined by the distribution and the size of these soil aggregates and pore spaces.

Soil structure is influenced by its physical, chemical and biological characteristics. Good soil structure is vital, as it can affect the availability of air, water and nutrients for plant growth. Agricultural practices can significantly alter soil structure. Poor soil structure can greatly reduce plant growth, making it difficult for plants to obtain water, air and nutrients and also impeding seedling emergence due to surface crusting.

The structure and texture of soil affects the soil's ability to hold or drain water and withstand cultivation and compaction by machinery and stock. For example, sandy soils have low water holding capacity and are easily damaged. On the other hand, heavy clay soils are very dense, do not drain water very well and have small pore spaces.

Sand is weakly structured because the sand grains are only weakly bonded together. A very heavy dispersive clay which sets hard into large sheets when dry has a massive structure. Most soil types fall in between these two structures.

An ideal soil has well formed, loose aggregates which hold water but have adequate drainage and are not easily broken down by machinery and stock.

Organic matter is the remains of living things or products of living things in the soil. Organic matter is important for soil structure. Organic matter on the soil surface (such as wheat stubble residues) protects the surface from the action of raindrops, reducing surface compaction and hardsetting. Organic matter also helps to bind sandy and silty soils together and also improves water infiltration through the soil. Organic matter also acts as a buffer against the forces of compaction.
Continuous cropping and cultivation can diminish organic matter in the soil very quickly, leading to soil structural decline.

The chemical make-up of the soil will also determine structure. When high amounts of sodium are present (>6 ESP%) clay particles separate and move freely about in wet soil conditions. When sodic soils come into contact with water, the water turns milky as the clay disperses. When the soil dries out a crust forms on the surface.
The effects of high levels of sodium on soil structure can be overcome through the application of gypsum. Gypsum contains calcium which stops clay from dispersing when it is wet. Calcium is able to overcome the repulsion of the negative charges which cause the clay particles to separate. It helps the clay particles to clump together through a process known as "flocculation".

Slaking is another problem that causes damage to soil structure. When intense rainfall hits dry soil, the surface of porous aggregates rapidly absorb the water and air is trapped internally. With further wetting the force of the air escaping can cause weak aggregates to disintegrate. This process of aggregates breaking into small particles is known as slaking and can block up pore spaces. When the soil surface dries, a crust will form. Slaking occurs within minutes, whereas dispersion may take hours. Slaking also causes water infiltration and seedling emergence problems.

A simple way of checking for sodic, or dispersive soils, is to take two or three pea-sized samples of clay and put them in a shallow container of rainwater. If the soil is sodic, a cloudy appearance will develop in the water around the clay. The quicker this happens, the more sodic the soil.

Slaking can also be checked using this method. When the clay sample is put into the shallow dish of water, it will crumble if prone to slaking (note that no cloudiness of the water occurs with slaking).

email minutiae: land contours

As part of the initial musings about the garden layout, we got onto the topic of land topography and Mum drew me a contour map

Another description by Mum of the land - 4th March 2004

property up there is lovely. we walked the boundary to measure it as expected of course. dogs ran and loved it. They went through the fence in a few places but generally the fences are good for a country place and would keep them in. they had to watch where they went under and once we had to help them back by holding the wire up. It was too far to walk back to where they had gone initially!

there is a dam not marked in the state forest down the back.. well back end of the side. It has water in it, a bit, and reeds and things. Angie at least went in and then came out and sunned herself ont he dam wall bit. She is the same colour as the clay! Later she stood under a tree, then sat, and looked every inch a dingo. Take the collar off and you would swear she had never seen a person! you have a few little bits of trees on your land, mostly where the edge of the crown land has sort of escaped or has not been cleared right back to the boundary. Not good forest but trees.. and the hill up behind the house gets a bit steep in one bit along the boundary - over 20 metres it dropped about up to Dad's chin. About 1.5 metres over 20 metres.. the rest was only 1m over 20 for about four measures, and most of the rest it was so little we did not bother.

My reply - 4th March 2004

That sounds good. I'm looking forward to seeing the other photos you took. Did you take any of the hidden dam? I'm curious about that, I didn't think they had dams in the forest. Is it definitely man made and not natural?

I've been reading a book about landscape gardening, it's actually part of the required reading for a correspondance course that I was thinking of taking a while back. But it's good because it gives an introduction on the things to consider and how to start in planning a garden of this scale. The first thing I need to do, which we will aim to do on the next trip back, is to get a detailed contour map of the land (e.g., like ordnance survey they have in the UK; not sure if they have the same in Australia?) and also to take soil samples from different parts of the land. It will be quite a task but I need to know the kind of soil it is, more than just what you can see by sight, so as to help in picking plants, etc. Also, I need to understand the light, and how the shadows fall from the forest, house, and where the trees are currently. etc etc etc. Also, I need to get a sense of the wind direction around there, e.g., are there parts that get a lot of wind, like a mini-wind tunnel?

There is so much basic info to collect, and then I can start working out where the basics go. e.g., I figure the positioning for the driveway is pretty much set as there won't be a lot of options probably... also the position of the house extension and orientation of the house. Also the position of the current dam, plus any other we chose to build, like a big one like in the other property I showed you. Although, I don't know if that will make sense, as there's no point in doing it unless it will look natural and fit the contours of the land. From what you saw of it, could you imagine anywhere it might fit? Also of course we have to work out the positioning of sheds and barns and things, which also will be set to some extent because the back part of the roofs (facing away from the house so not seen, ideally) will be covered in solar panels, and they will have to face a certain direction to get the most sun.

Once you've positioned all the buildings/fixed things, then you start planning the garden areas... you start with shapes, apparently. Also looking for balance of "mass" vs "void" with shrubs, trees etc being mass and void being flat parts whether it is paving or dirt or lawn... apparently ratio is 3 void to 1 mass, approx. With the shapes you cluster them in nice patterns and also taking into account effect in terms of blocking views, shade, impact on wind flows etc etc. The shapes, combined with the climate conditions and soil type will go partway to narrowing down your plant options for each position. Then next you consider texture, and finally colour, and then also the dimension of looking different across seasons. You plan it first for the mature garden, say 15 years out, and then you work backwards to current day. So you plant the long-living trees, shrubs apart enough for their full grown size, and fill in the gaps with short-living species and/or bedding plants, ground cover. There is apparently a system for designing gardens on this scale, alongside the creative art to choosing plants (akin to painting I think), so I am going to have a go at planning it myself given that planning is something I can do while over here and it'll be fun.

Mum's reply - 5th March 2004

yes there is a photo of the hidden dam. Quite small and most definitely man made. the overflow would normally run into your property - I mean, if no dam, it would be the watercourse marked on map. But they have done the overflow at site furthest from your house and channelled it along the far side of fenceline ie in the forest for about 100 yds - when it meanders back into your place. We are talking a creek of depth about 6 inches maximum, mind you and dry as dry can be. but, if you got good rains and the creek flowed naturally, the back end of your place could become a swamp. I think the overflow is always at a side of the dam so it does not wash away the whole thing when overflowing but Dave will know more about that than me.

Not much shade anwhere apart from the stand alone trees and along the forst boundaries and even then it is the scrubby shade, not the sort you get from eg oak trees. the steep down bit to 'gully' where hjidden dam is is about three quartes along that side boundary by forest. there is a patch of trees on on the "peak".. we are talking about 80 metres long maybe and about 30 metres out at the max from fence.

Wind yes, not sure where from BUT the"valley" goes a long way along.. ie back along the road, all open.. can see a long way and there are indeed some little"mountains" in the far distance. you would only see them in clear weather. I imagine the wind would come up the valley - ie from east mostly as there is nothing to stop it. but I think it was from north when we were there , not a lot to stop it from that way either.

will ahve to get photos in for processing tomorrow.

Mum's hand drawing of the land contours - 5th March 2004

attempt at drawing with computer.

black lines are about where creeks would run if they ran. I have tried to show contour lines, and remember the blue bit round creek at right si the lowest and it works up from there. Sorry I can't view from here. Red is highest I think. and the treey bit.

From flatest bit to highest bit would be about, er, 10 metres?? less maybe? I am thinking though the steepest bit down to corner with hidden dam dropped up to Dad's chin in 20 metres and it rose about a metre per 20 metres two or three times on the ohter side of peak, and dropped once like that before the sharp drop. slope from house down to front fence is more gradual but probably about a metre drop maybe two over 100metres or so. Top edge is east. left edge is north -- almost due north. "Mountains" area a long way along the open area to the east. Miles.

I am sure it is not to scale!



My response - 6th March 2004

Thanks for drawing this up, it helps a lot. I hadn't realised the house was up on the hill part nearer the forest. I'd thought it was down nearer the gate.

Do you think there's space between the edge of our land and the existing dam for a single-lane driveway to go between the fence and the dam? Or would it have to loop round the other side of the dam? Also whereabouts are the trees, at least the few that exist at the moment?

If the top edge is the East, and hence the nice long view off into the distance, and the bottom edge is the state forest, what is on the other two edges? Are they all just wire fenced and open pasture, or is there another house anywhere in view nearby or any trees in the neighbouring land? Even though it's not our land, it'll help me get a feel for how things are arranged and potential wind paths.

It's nice that the land rises up a little again on the right hand edge. Also, looks like there is a slight dip in the middle top right area, where it's lower ground, so if we wanted to have a bigger dam then could do it there, where the other creek would flow (the one that's dried up because of the little dam in the state forest).

There were three photos in the original web listing; two were of the house, and one was of an area where there were some small trees growing, couldn't work out if they had self-seeded or were deliberately planted. I'm guessing from your description of the forest overflowing it's boundaries that it must be at the top part?

I might get creative tomorrow with paper mache or something and build myself a 3D model, at least as an approximation. It'll be like being back at primary school!

getting started on the garden

We decided to start thinking about the garden before the house, mainly because trees take so much longer to grow. Also, because of that, we don't have time to make mistakes, planting the wrong kind of tree or in the wrong position. So, even though its still going to be very much our own garden, we decided to get expert help in the planning. After some searching online we found Prue from http://www.pruemetcalfegardens.com.au. She's based in Melbourne but has worked in Germany and the UK so is familiar with the kind of gardening styles that I've learned about here. Also, among other things, she specialises in dry-tolerant English style gardens.