Living with less Lawn

This is the second part of a retrospective series of garden projects from the last six months.

Inspired by my attack on the Drive Bed it was time to do something about the front lawn. Lawn is the first thing you can't water when water restrictions are introduced. So living with less lawn seems a good starting point for a drought prosperous garden.

The job : take a big bite out of the front lawn. The first step was to work out the beds shape with the garden hose and then mark it with flouro spray paint. Next we seperated soil from turf used a couple of old milk crates. The holes in the bottom of the crates were large enough to catch the grass tufts and pass the soil, making an ideal filter. Then we added a layer of new compost enriched soil and set up the soaker hose. Soaker hose would be great if it wasn't so fond of curling up. In the end I played to it's strength and let it curl, which looked kind of interesting, before covering it with mulch.

To get the bed going we planted 2 Callistemons (Bottle Brush), a Hebe, a Banksia and two Correa's. The Callistemon's should grow to roof height and make the house's entrance more private. The larger of the two is Callistemon pallidus which has a lemon flower (will post the first flowers when they arrive). We had a red Callistemon in our last house. It hung over the path to the front door which looked great. But the flowers played havoc in the gutters. Both of these are planted well clear of the house and so shouldn't be a problem.

My partners father had spent many years trying to grow Banksia's (a couple of blocks from our current address) without much success and she has been reminding me of this since I planted this one. It was off to a great start until the temperature hit 41° a couple of weeks ago. It now has an equal number of green and brown leaves; I'm waiting for a sign that it's will survive.