smartgardenwatering.org.au

After years of drought we have recently seen a lot of rain (far too much in some parts), my garden looks better than ever and I hardly have to do a thing except pull out the weeds that are loving life at the moment. It seems that all the plants are flourishing but closer inspection suggests that some plants aren't benefiting and are possibly even suffering from the abundance of rain while others are looking so good that it seems they weren't getting enough water before. So how much water do they need?

 Obviously most look great with heaps of watering which is fantastic for the moment but in times of drought having the most luscious plants isn't the main priority, keeping them alive is. But how do we find a compromise between what we want, what the plants want and whats best for the environment in terms of water saving? This question will become more pressing as climate change mucks around with our weather patterns and average rainfall. 

This is where www2.smartgardenwatering.org.au comes into play as a very helpful tool. It is designed to calculate the amount of water your garden needs and how often it needs it, taking into account many environmental factors. The very first step, before you even register your garden, is immediately helpful. After entering your suburb (unfortunately suburbs of  Melbourne, Vic only) it immediately tells you the average yearly rainfall for your area.

Following on from this you are prompted to choose the factors of your garden; size, plants (from a huge and easy to use list including pictures), watering method, mulch and environmental conditions. After this information has been gathered it will calculate the amount of water needed and how often to water. I only used a selection of plants as the site only caters for plants in soil. As I live in a terrace with a courtyard most of mine are in pots, though there is a climbing fig on one wall, a lavender bush, space for some spring annuals and a few succulents. Even with this abridged list I was surprised at how little water the site suggested my plants needed, 7 minutes a month and only in January. 7 minutes hose watering a year. 

This is an excellent site that would be extremely helpful to those with a large and established garden, though it didn't quite suite my needs. It would be good if it had options for gardens with lots of plants in pots. I would have liked to have tried it with my Mums garden but as it is a relatively new site it only registers Melbourne suburbs, so I look forward to having a garden that I can use smartgardenwatering.org.au on. 

Overall a really good site, very well made and easy to use. I highly recommend you have a look. 

 

In North Melbourne there really isn't a huge deal of variation between the front gardens, as they are so small the options are slightly limited but most still give it a shot...

This geranium lives in a shop front/house on Victoria Street, Its pretty amazing. I love it. 

 This is my favorite house ever, they garden is so amazing to look at, its crowded but it works really well, there is always something flowering. I wish more people did things like this in their gardens. Its everything I love about amateur gardening (not that i know for sure this is amateur), Its idiosyncratic, doesn't really have too much design going on and seems to be all the owners favorite plants thrown together but it works so well and obviously has a lot of thought put into it. I don't know the people that own it but I can imagine this kind of garden would reflect the personalities of the people that created it. Therefore the people that live here are most likely rad. 

 And it's for sale!!! Can I borrow a few million please? Thanks. 

When people get to do whatever they want with their gardens some pretty odd stuff can come out, for example the above garden type is pretty common, concreted (or in this case concrete with tiny red rocks stuck in it) with two round hole in it for plants to poke through. When I first came across this I intended to put it on here as an example of a front yard gone wrong, but as I wrote about the idiosyncrasy of the previous garden I thought 'what makes the concrete garden so bad?' after all, it is very well maintained so obviously the person that lives there likes it as it is, and possibly even designed it like this. Just because it isn't to my taste at all, does that make it a 'bad' garden? Obviously these things are totally subjective and by most current standards this isn't a great feat of garden design, but it's not our garden and it may well give the owner a great deal of pleasure to look at. So by these measures it is a very successful garden, this is what amateur gardening is great for, do whatever you like because it doesn't have to look good to anyone but you. But who knows, maybe the resident hates it...

Boo. Thumbs down. 

After publicly judging my neighbors gardens I should come clean, I'm a hypocrite. This is my 'front yard' and its dismal, the blacony comes off my bedroom and it doesn't even have a pot plant on it in this photo. Boo! I do have lots of plants though, they are in the backyard, it's really lovely out there, I promise!!

Fun with Natives

The variety of plants around North Melbourne is vast and interesting, though it has a noticeable lack of natives. A few streets are lined with Eucalyptus and Callistemons but thats about it.

The above Callistemons are growing out o circular grates in the concrete, its a pretty bizarre sight, from a distance they look as though they have just sprung up. 

Eucalyptus provide a lot of shade for the cars, and look great with the trains whizzing past coming from...BENDIGO!

As part of this blog I wanted to look at natives, but noted the lack in the area to comment on. I am, however, from Eppalock, just outside of Bendigo, where there are plenty of natives. At the moment I don't have any photos from Mum and Dads but I wanted to put down what I've been thinking about today in regards to the bush they live in. On the weekend I spoke to a friend of a friend, a Burnley graduate who now works in landscaping.We got onto the topic of the Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne and they native plantings there. He made a really interesting comment, that he sees Eucalypts and Callistemons as mainstays, things that are reliable to plant, keep alive and will provide a good aesthetic, but the real beauty of Australian landscapes and habitats is what you don't usually see. He pointed out that the rain of the previous year has awoken seeds that have been dormant for years, at the right times wild flowers are springing up where they previously have not and shrubs have grown so quickly they look like they were always there. It seems like an obvious point but I think it is a great image, seeds laying dormant in the harsh Australian soils for decades, then springing back up to surprise people who had forgotten they existed, or who had never before seen them. This type of changing and self regulating environment would be like the holy grail of garden design, and it happens constantly.

The reason I mention Mum and Dads place is because when I think about it I have seen this many times. We moved to their 20 acre bush block in 2003. A beautiful and reliable landscape of Yellow Box (Eucalyptus melliodora), Grey Box (Eucalyptus microcarpa), Sticky Everlasting Daisies (Xerochrysum viscosum) and Chinese Scrub (Cassinia arcutata). These along with a few others appeared every year during the drought or persisted wonderfully throughout. Then we had a wet winter, and the change was amazing. The first thing I noticed going back at first was the amazing amount of green, it was so bright and almost didn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, asif the air itself had an emerald colour, even mums roses were looking good (she's English, shes lost the accent but can't shake the roses). In the bush there was an amazing shrub that had popped up and was dotted around the place in huge numbers, I later found out it was Egg and Bacon Plant (Eutaxia myrtifolia)  that was awesome and everywhere, but I had never seen it in 8 years of living there. 

That whole time this great plant had been there, but I either never knew, never noticed, or it was laying under the surface waiting to pop and and freak everyone out with it's sudden appearance. This spontaneity of natural landscpapes is something I miss now that Im in Melbourne, the surprises the flora and fauna provide completely independant of human influence is something you so rarely see in planted and thought out gardens. This independence also makes saying 'this land belongs to mum and dad' seem arbitrary, they live on it and no-one else is allowed on it, but the activity and life on it are so far removed and will carry on regardless of ownership or land titles (The back half of the bushland is legally protected).

Unfortunately this post feels incomplete without photos, so I will be sure to post some ASAP, i just wanted to get my thoughts down while they were fresh. 

Note: While the plants listed are all natives, I have yet to check which are indigenous to the area.

 North Melbourne from Google Earth

Mother and Father dearests place, the small patch up the top is theirs, the huge patch across the road is part of the Kimbolton State Forrest that goes around Lake Eppalock (via Google Earth)

...just wanted to note how great Lake Eppalock looked while it was low...

That tree's a bit big isn't it?

North Melbourne is very old suburb, it was orginially established in the mid 1800's when it was called Hotham. This long history is reflected in the gardens of the terraces, not only in the changing patchwork of styles ad design but in the age of the trees and plants living in the tiny spaces. In this entry i want to show examples of front yards dealing with decisions, good or bad, that were made a long long time ago...in a galaxy...no.

These two photos of Palms are from two different houses, the first one is from a tiny little terrace with a yard that about seven by three feet, the whole house is obscured, theres only one little bit you can see it from! It looks like it would be at least 100 years old, whoever planted it clearly wasn't thinking that long term..

The second one is an example of palms being used more successfully, they seem to be getting a little bit too big but I think they look great, a little bit of ground cover or under story might look good but they are really striking as they are and they have a great symmetry to them. Luckily these people have a big front yard. Beautiful!

 I love this one, its amazing! It's the pattern lift after a creeper has been removed and taken some of the very old paint with it. The pattern it has left is amazing and so so detailed, you can see where every little branch was going. The paint that has been revealed underneath is great too, all the different layers have been exposed showing all the colours this wall has been painted over the past 150-200 years. There is a section that looks like it may have been a mural or advertisement at some stage.

I'm not too sure how quickly these vines grow but the thickening on the stem suggests it is pretty old, the pole and the vine definitely look well acquainted. The plant actually grows well above the frame of this shot, to the top of this double story terrace, onto the roof and over to the attached houses. Good luck getting that off. 

This massive Lilli Pilli is in a tiny yard too, though it's less likely 

to blind you than the giant spiky palm we saw before. 

 I don't know how i feel about this, its huge and growing out of a grate in the pavement, but it looks amazing. i think im mainly just impressed.

These are all really cool examples of the horticulture of the area saying as much about it's history as the architecture. People long before the current tenants planted these trees and they are still giving us something to look at so many years later. Lovely! 

Small Spaces and Huge Budgets

North Melbourne is a really pretty place, its a mix of old industrial buildings and factories, many of which are still functioning, wealthy terrace living, poor rented terrace living, trains and a bit of city creeping in there too. I moved here from Brunswick about two months ago and hadn't had a chance to look around properly, or just stroll the streets. When I set out with the camera i was planning on taking photos of the small parks dotted around the place but instead found the gardens of the terraces to be much more interesting. People are doing some really interesting things with spaces only a few feet long and its an interesting mash of competition between neighbours to have the nicer garden (a lot of English Box hedge and pebbles!) and people being really creative and using the space they have really well...or not at all. In this blog ill look at different ways of utilising small spaces and making the most of a very crowded and old suburb.

cheers!