Create a Garden from Scratch in 3 Hours

Ever wanted to create a garden from scratch but a little unsure of exactly how to do it? This time last year I was exactly the same! Thankfully my Mum has very green thumbs and has been helping me over the last 6 months to turn my paddock into a garden. You can see what it looked like before we started here.  Since then Aaron has been levelling ground and planting lawn, we even have a fence now! So excuse the scruffy state of the lawn in the photos, it’s still a growing baby.

Along the east side of the house was looking pretty bare so I decided to liven it up a bit with some garden. I started by outlining where I wanted the garden edge to be by creating the shape with a hose.  As you can see, this area is quite dry as the roof protects the ground from the rain. Once I had my outline sorted, I started digging up the ground. I was doing this the old fashioned way until darling hubby came in from the farm and asked why I wasn’t using the rotary hoe. Uhhmmm, does it look like I know how to use that thing? Ha! The rotary hoe broke up the soil into a finer consistency. It was still a bit rough though so I got in with my trowel and garden gloves breaking up the dirt so it was even finer. I picked out as much as the grass as I could and put it elsewhere. This is quite fertile soil so I didn’t worry about putting any fertiliser in it. I’ll probably top it with some compost or manure at some point though.  The next step was creating an edge. I used leftover bricks from the house to line the edges, making sure the bricks were nice and level along the line. I had already bought a variety of plants that do well in dry spots and popped them where I thought they would look best. These plants all like full sun which is what they’ll get in this area. When doing this I was thinking about colour, balance and height. Some of the plants will grow quite tall so I wanted to make sure they were in the right spot.

These are the plants I have (from left to right):

-Elfin Pittosporum, will grow 0.5m x 0.5m

-Osteospermum

-Carpet Rose in Pink Splash

-Rose Bush- Iced Ginger

-Hebe Buxifolia- this will spread out over the garden

-Elfin Pittosporum

-Joyful Cherub Lavender- Drought Tolerant

A little trick that my Mum taught me is to dunk the whole flower pot in a bucket of water and hold it in until it stops bubbling. This means the plant is really well watered before you put it in the ground.  When planting a new plant you want the hole to be deeper and wider than the pot. I always make sure that the soil is broken up nicely so the plant can put new roots through it. Sometimes I’ll break up a little of the bottom of the roots as well.  Voila! It only took me three hours to do all this. Since it’s Autumn these plants won’t need to be watered much at all. If it was Summer I would probably water these plants every day or two until they’re well established.  Over the next year these plants will grow quite a bit. Then I’ll be able to figure out if I need any more to fill gaps.Who would complain about looking out at this huh? Eventually I’ll have garden along that fence line too but until then I’m just enjoying having grass! When we shifted in it looked like the photo below…

I just thought I’d share these photos that I took of some of the flowers. Aren’t they the prettiest?!

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below and I’ll try my best to answer them (or get my Mum to!) Keep up to date and get exclusive freebies by signing up to my mailing list below!

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