The weekend started in its normal fashion – rise early to blog before taking No.1 son to his soccer game in Margaret River (60kms away) then back home by 12:00. I sat and read the paper for an hour over lunch before my wife suggested that we do something with one of the dead corners of our garden.
The first step of our garden room design was to erect a fence so that we could hide all the rubbish in one area. The new rubbish area will one day be our spa and tropical rainforest garden but that won’t happen until a few other projects are completed. We had already put the posts in the ground a few months earlier but hadn’t progressed any further than that.
My wife became inspired with a couple of sheets of colourbond that we had laying around so we nailed them to the posts and found we actually liked the look. We’ve got a half-dozen buddleias, which we grew as cuttings 4 years ago, ready to plant in front of this “inspired” fence so over time it will become hidden anyway.
The right-hand garden bed is completely shaded so we’re planning to grow hellabores, jacobinias, hydrangeas, camelias and rhododendrons there. Some of these we already have but unfortunately we’ll have to plan some excursions to the nurseries for the others – that’s going to be tough to handle.
Along the fence at the back will be a hedge of buddlieas, some nasturtiums and a cherry tree that has been busting out of its growing bag.
The left-hand side is our veggie patches that we can’t work on until we’ve completed our shed and moved everything from our temporary shed into it. I’m looking forward to this day with eager anticipation. In front of the veggie patch we plan to situate an old bath adorned with strawberry plants – we just have to source an old bath.
In the centre of this new garden room will be a small aviary. We’re keen to have some finches and quails to keep our children amused and provide another dimension to our garden.
The floor of this garden room will be crazy paved with slate and river stones with the odd chamomile thrown in to break up the harsh look of the rock.
The entrance to this garden room design is the piece d’resistance. It involves our last of three garden arbors made from jarrah posts and supporting a grape vine over its trellis. The beauty of the grape vine will be its deciduous habit in winter allowing much of the sun to penetrate the garden beds as it lies lower in the sky.