Overgrown

Our front garden is a little overgrown. A few years ago we decided to get rid of the existing plantings - the grass would never grow because of two large trees, and it was using a lot of water. We hired a landscape designer to design a garden which would get by with little or no watering. The resulting garden has evolved a little in five years - it is mostly native plants, plus some drought-tolerant exotics. As someone who has always preferred exotic, cottage-garden type plants, I'm surprised how much I've come to love natives.

For the first two years, I watered the garden 2 or 3 times a week in summer. Some plants didn't survive, so I replaced them with others. The garden really started to take off when we mulched it. Most of the garden now survives on watering no more than once a fortnight, and only in the height of summer. One side of the garden gets no watering at all, other than rainfall. It will be interesting to see how it all goes this summer, after such a dry winter.

Some of my plant choices were probably not the wisest in terms of general maintenance. I have five native wedding bush plants - who knew that these grow so quickly and to such an enormous size? (Probably those who do their research properly, unlike moi.) They do look stunning when they're in flower and have a lovely perfume, but they need to be pruned very regularly or they just take over.

Yesterday, I went to work with my shears and did some cutting back/trimming/tidying. The garden still looks overgrown...but I think I like it that way.