Hi MGS members, I'm using this post, my first on the forum as an introduction. I garden in the Adelaide Hills, close to the city of Adelaide in South Australia. I'm building a garden at the moment, pretty much from scratch at the same time as working full time and looking after a young family, two children aged five and ten months. As you can imagine this doesn't leave as much time for gardening as I would like, but we make the most of what little time we have and the garden is coming along nicely! I have to be patient and not get too discouraged by the shortage of time.
We moved into our house in June (winter) of 2010 and we waited before doing anything major, to see what there was hiding beneath the soil. We were rewarded with a a mass of bulbs, bluebells, jonquils, hyacinths, snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum) and some dutch irises. Another nice suprise was a nice little Laburnum tree (Laburnum x watereri 'Vossii') which was unidentifiable in winter.
So there were some things of value in the garden but in general the beds were poorly constructed, sloping, badly maintained and overrun with weeds, especially that curse of mediterranean gardeners World wide, Oxalis pes-caprae.
In 2011 we undertook some major landscaping to terrace the sloping front garden. A small tractor was used to excavate and level the lower section and then we bought some very nice (and very expensive) limestone blocks, to construct retaining walls giving us beds with good access and better conditions for growing plants. In 2011-2012 we did some planting in the new front garden and managed to keep everything alive through the blistering summer and extended autumn drought. Now I am concentrating on sourcing and propagating plants which I like and which I think will do well for me in our harsh environment.
This winter I've prepared a new area, gently sloping and with good soil, about 16m square. I am planning to plant this out in a kind of Piet Oudolf inspired style, with patch plantings of perennials and perennial grasses. I'm currently raising plants from seed for this project and having quite a bit of success.
I shall post some more pictures tonight once the kids are asleep.