Eloise Faith: 2017

It's been a couple of years since I first showed you the landscaping of our shady south facing garden and spa area. I thought you might like to see some more recent photos of the garden, taking during the summer 2016.

Shady garden

Some parts are going great guns, and others have struggled. Most notably was the Magnolia Genie trees. The first one, at the top of the slope, is thriving and is now 3m tall. The middle one completely died (2m from the first) and the bottom one has really struggled. We decided the terrible soil was responsible, so dug a 50cm deep trench, 30cm wide and about 4m long through this area. This was filled with better soil, compost and potting mix. The bottom one hasn't recovered yet, but hopefully once we hit spring will take off. The middle one is completely gone.

I put in some cuttings of the Hydrangea Merville Sanguine, which have hardly done anything besides produce 2 or 3 huge blooms and that's it. The one I bought has done so much better. A lesson there?

I loved the Pieris that I had, though 2 of the 3 also died! I blame the drainage again, so will get some more once they come back into stock and hopefully this time they will do better.

I've added several of the stunning Hydrangea Limelight that you can see in the pictures. They are amazing! They love the sun, unlike the Hydrangea Bridal Bouquet which gets horribly sunburned, even in this south facing garden.

The Japanese Anemones are a bit inconsistent. I have them trying to take over some areas, and then really struggling to get going in others. I plan for them to run along the back of the garden, where it's very dry under the eves.

I've got several different Hellebores now: White Magic which isn't living up to expectations and a gorgeous red which I can't remember right now.

And finally we have added a little red weeping maple under the lounge window. The first time I've ever had a maple. It must be a sheltered spot if that one lasts!

It's nearly time to trim back all the hydrangeas and anemones and tuck things up for the winter now, so goodnight until spring!

Shady garden

Gardening really is my favourite hobby. One of the things I most look forward to when the kids go back to school is getting stuck into the garden: dead-heading the roses, trimming up the buxus hedging, weeding out any nasties. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I find it extremely therapeutic.

We had been enjoying our front patio for about 6 months, but the resulting wasteland that had been left behind in the area adjacent to it (above the small sleeper retaining wall and pergola) was a serious eyesore.

One reason I had left it until last was that it was the one I see from my kitchen window, and so it had to be perfect. Somehow things are so much more perfect in ones mind's eye than in the 'flesh' so I was a bit loath to start. However with the progress in the house in removing the old brick chimney, I had piles of antique bricks just waiting to be used in the pathway that I envisioned would wind down through the colourful cottage garden I would plant either side. The time was now and we all know the middle of winter is the best time to be moving dirt and laying paths...right??

And when I say moving dirt, I mean really moving dirt. Somehow dirt expands. Yes I know it scientific, but it's also a bit magical. We had to relocate quite a bit of dirt in order to level the patio area, and the logical area for this to be dumped is on the next garden to be done. Now it was time to sculpt this.

We marked out a winding path roughly in this, stuck a few pegs in each end in order to string line an approximate level of the path, and began moving dirt.

Piles of dirt!

Potentially a lovely site.

There is a really cool feature in our garden. As you know, it's on a steep hill side. The patio has a 4m retaining wall below it. At the bottom of this is...well..wasteland. Eventually it will be landscaped (of a sort) but as we all know, the best location for stuff you don't want is, well, the next area. So we bucketed hundreds of buckets of clay and rubbish over the patio fence. My boys discovered a colony of snails while helping me, which they had races with and anything else to distract them from helping.

Boys getting distracted with snails...

Slowly the ground smoothed out, we added compost and garden mix and potting mix and whatever bags of soil we had lying around the garden centre that we own. And every single bag had to be carried down three flights of steps to the house. My poor husband.

It got so muddy we had to temporary lay the bricks!

Next, we started in the path. I concreted in the edges, lining up both ends with the adjacent paths, and string lining between to get an even fall, I used a measured piece of timber to ensure the same width all along its length. Following this I laid 3cm of sand, having screwed together another little contraption. The top piece of wood laid across the top of the edge bricks. The next piece of wood, which I screwed to the first, was the gap piece of wood. This was specifically as deep as the bottom of the path bricks would sit. This took into account the fact that the side bricks were on their sides in order to have them sitting about 3cm higher than the path. So, say the bricks were 5cm thick, add the 3cm difference and the gap piece of wood ought to end 8cm below the edges. I screeded the sand and then laid the bricks.

Measuring contraption

This was no easy task. My grandfather had told me not to try a curved brick path. So I made a curved brick path. As I like it rustic, it's part of the charm to have irregular gaps and spacing.

There was one problem: As I like to do things properly, the 1.4m paved path that was already extending into this area had to come out. It didn't match. Cue domestic. Needless to say, I won. I was sick of piles of building materials everywhere, so in the process I sold off a pile of excess bricks. It had been a huge chimney, way too many bricks...

Yep

Not enough bricks. I'd calculated based on my original measurements, before championing the removal of the mis-matched path. So I had to buy 30 more bricks off Trade-me. For more than I sold the 'excess' ones.