My front garden ferns

One of our top garden beds at the front of the house is completely planted out with ferns.

I am not sure what kind of fern it is and if anyone can help me to identify them it would be very much appreciated it. I think that it is a sword fern.

My fern bed

In any event, it is a fern of some type and I must say that in this setting I am not a big fan of how it looks.

I am open to the idea of ferns. In fact, we have a garden out the back I like to call our shade garden. It has ferns growing in it and they look quite nice in that setting.

But all lined up like little soldiers that have completely taken over the garden bed? It’s not for me. I want something pretty at the front of our house. Some colour. Some nice flowers.

The ferns just look messy.

So at this stage, I think that if we have success with our other front garden bed in which we have planted azaleas, impatiens, agapanthus and native violets, then the ferns might have to go to be replaced by something prettier and more colourful.

  

What would you do?

I see the benefit of the ferns. This garden bed, unlike all of our other garden beds, hardly ever had any weeks growing in it. Presumably the sheer volume of ferns is keeping them at bay? That's what I guess anyway. So there is big benefit to the fern bed. No weeds, no weeding, low maintenance. 

Yet I still can't help but prefer the look of the beautiful colourful flowers. 

What would you do? Would keep the ferns and stick to colourful flowers in the other beds? Would you get rid of the colourful flowers in the other beds and plant ferns in them all? Would you pull all the ferns out and plant colourful flowers in that garden bed as well?

I'm just not sure.  

Beginning my gardening quest

I am beginning my gardening quest at the front of my house. I think it’s important to feel good when you walk in the front door of your house and until recently I wasn’t.

Why?

We have a serious weed problem here at Aidanvale. 

It’s not just us. Our entire street is completely overrun. The garden beds built around the beautiful crepe myrtle trees in the footpaths are completely overrun with weeds. Houses up and down the street are completely overrun with weeds. You can see the attempts that some people have made to tame their gardens. There are a couple of houses that have perfectly immaculate gardens, totally weed free. I can just imagine how long it them to achieve that small miracle. Other houses have taken the complete opposite approach and completely given up the fight and allowed the weeks to take control (our next door neighbour is a prime example). Then there are the majority of us, my family included, who make attempts but they just don’t seem to work.

When we first moved into Aidanvale we were quite conscientious about weeding the front garden. Then over time we prioritised it less and less and of course eventually the weeds came and overtook most of the garden beds.

Walking up your front steps through a sea of weeds isn’t a nice feeling. For me anyway. My husband doesn’t seem to mind but he is a lot less sensitive about things like that than me.  

The one garden bed that didn’t become overridden was the one garden bed that it planted out almost entirely with some type of fern. I am not sure what type of fern it is and to be honest, I am not a big fan of the look of the ferns in the front garden bed. I am more of a flowers kind of person.

It did get me thinking though. The more plants that were in the garden bed, the less likely it was that the weeds could become prolific. Probably very obvious to a keen gardener but to a novice brown-thumb like me it felt a little bit like a revelation.

Have we found the solution?

Maybe the solution to our weed problem is to just plant out the garden beds as much as possible. Lots of plants, some ground cover and a generous dose of mulch. That might actually do the trick.

With that in mind we headed off to Bunnings looking for shade suitable flowers that would produce some colour and keep those weeds at bay.

What did we come home with?

For the top garden bed, we purchased some impatiens, some azaleas (a couple of which were already in the garden bed hiding under the weeds so it seemed like a good idea) and some native violets as ground cover. We already had an agapanthus in the garden so we split it up into smaller pieces and planted it in a row along the back of the garden bed.

This is the result and I must say that I am pretty proud of it.

No, it’s not fully planted our according to my theory. That’s because given our track record caring for our poor old garden, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a large volume of mature plants that we might yet again fail to care for. 

I love the splash of colour that we have in the garden bed now.

Australia Native Violet (Viola hederacea). We planted five of these to provide ground cover

My gorgeous little Azalea Red Wings. At the moment it is a very tiny little plant and I really hope that it grows

One of my gorgeous impatiens. I love the two toned pink. We have another 5 impatiens, all of which seem to be growing in different colours

The impatien peaking out from under an agapanthus

 

So we are starting small and we will add to the garden as we need to. For now I am very happy with how it looks. One week later and already some weeds are starting to peek through. Hopefully, though, if we keep on top of it the mulch and the plants will eventually do their job and keep those nasty weeds at bay. 

If anyone has any tips at getting rid of weeds and keeping them away, I am more than welcome to any tips. 

I want to talk about my garden

I want to talk about my garden. It might be a little boring perhaps to read a description of my gardens but gardening has been preoccupying me somewhat lately and I thought that a good place to start is to set out what garden I actually have.

When I think about my house there are, I think, four distinct areas of garden.

The first is the front garden.

Given the era that Aidanvale was built in, the house is situated quite close to the footpath. There isn’t a front yard to speak of. Instead there are four garden beds. There are two garden beds on the left and two on the right with a footpath and stairs up to the front door going through the middle. The front garden beds are at footpath level and the back garden beds are slightly raised with a little rock retaining wall.

The second is the herb garden out the side of my house.

The herb garden before we moved in made some changes. I'll get an updated photo soon

It is set into a raised concrete wall that encloses the little courtyard off my kitchen. Rafael loves to use the wall around the herb garden as his racing track and race his cars round and round. We have a few herbs growing in it at the moment. There was a lovely big rosemary bush but now, sadly, it is a little scraggly rosemary bush after my husband took to it with gusto with some pruning shears. We also have some mint, perennial basil, sage and thyme. There were two large vines that were growing up a trellis but we have started removing them and are trying to cultivate a passionfruit vine there instead. There are also a couple of little lavender bushes. They are very small and most of the year they look very sad. When they do flower in spring they look lovely.  There’s also a largish space that at the moment isn’t growing anything. An enormous oregano plant had taken over almost an entire side of the herb garden but we took it out and haven’t as yet replaced it with anything. We’ll get around to it. 

The third little garden is what I think of as my shade garden.

At the back of the house, right off the family room is another court yard. It is has the garage on one side of it, and then a beautiful sandstone wall separating the courtyard from the grassy backyard beyond. Built into the sandstone wall is a water feature with two inbuilt garden beds on either side. To the left, along the fence, is a large garden bed that receives almost no sun whatsoever. It is shaded by large trees and a beautiful star jasmine vine that trails over a pagoda like structure. At the moment it has a beautiful camellia tree growing in it, some ferns and some dianella, an interesting Australian native. We haven’t touched this garden since we moved in and it’s still thriving. There are definitely more weeds poking through but the ground cover seems to keep them mostly in check.

Finally (and I have been dreading writing about this one) we have the back yard. 

Here is our little Ninja Turtle in the backyard, sitting in a hole - before we let it get out of control

As in, the grassed area at the very rear of our property. There are garden beds around most of it. When I say garden beds, I mean weed beds. We haven’t done any gardening out there for months. The grass is at waist height. Literally. Some of the weeds are actually even taller. The vines haven’t been trimmed and are growing out into the middle of the yard.

When I think of that back yard I am thoroughly ashamed of myself and so I try not to think about it much. I certainly try to avoid going out there. It’s a shame because that’s where the clothes line is. I have actually taken to hanging the clothes on clothes horses in the family room just to avoid having to go out into the backyard. That makes me even more ashamed of myself. It’s a cycle that I can’t seem to break because we have let it get so wild it just seems too hard to start trying to fix it.

I did warn people in an earlier post that my thumb is generally the opposite of green and the backyard definitely goes to prove that point.

No. I am being too kind to myself.

What that backyard proves is just how lazy I really am.

Although tackling the backyard still just seems like too big a job for me right now, I am making an effort to improve the front garden beds and the herb garden. They are my current projects and I will share more about them in future posts. 

One year almost gone and a baby on the way

I’m not really sure where to start.

We have moved in and have been living at Aidanvale for almost one year now. Christmas has come and gone and our ‘almost two year old’ (when this blog started) now turns three on Monday.  

I feel like I want to assess how that first year has gone and to compare it to my post at around this time last year where I enumerated what I hoped for our new lifestyle in Granville.

I must admit that I am finding it very challenging to do that. The year has just gone so fast. Before we knew it we were in the house, heading back to work and Rafael was settled into his new day care centre.

We had another big change to our routine in July 2014 when I started a new job in Sydney City and increased my working days.

Then in November 2014 we had another big change to our routine. We discovered that I am expecting our second baby, who is due in August 2015.

So all in all it has been a really big year for us with the new house, new day care, new job and news about a new baby. That makes it challenging to assess how close we are to my vision for what I hoped our new lifestyle might be out here in the suburbs.

I will say this. We don’t regret it for even a heartbeat. Life is easier in a house. Rafael loves playing outside with his cars and kicking his balls and he’s even getting involved in some of the gardening. We’re even getting used to the not-so-good coffee. Other than the challenges of pregnancy (which would take me three blog posts to enumerate) life couldn’t be better.