What's growing in your garden?

[Whateverist]

Thank you every one for the photos, and Whateverist If the problem with the lawn and your bitch is spotting, you can get a tomato extract food supplement for dogs which stops the problem. I have seen it work several times and used to advise my customers to use it.

I would love to hear more about that tomato extract, jonb. I'm thinking of yanking the lawn for a low growing groundcover anyway. Do you work in garden design/build or maintenance? (This may wind up being my third career.)

[jonb]

I would love to hear more about that tomato extract, jonb. I'm thinking of yanking the lawn for a low growing groundcover anyway. Do you work in garden design/build or maintenance? (This may wind up being my third career.)

I can't remember now what the extracts were called but there were a number of different manufactures. Grass where I was gardening could take far more punishment than other ground cover. My advice would be if you want to walk on it, but it looks patchy and uneven and can't get it to look smooth is to go the other way introduce wild flowers to some parts grow the grass to different heights, some bits treat as a pasture and you could have mown paths through it or if it is a small area you could cut it tightly at the paths edge and then let it graduate into wilderness. A lawn does not have to be conventional, it can have different coloured grasses sown in drifts to make patterns, scented plants like thymes and chamomiles can be planted into it, to add a bit of sensuality into a roll in the hay.
If you are going to work for yourself, the best advice I got was to, only work in gardens you like. A gardener gets so much work through word and mouth, and it is hard to do a good job in a place you don't like. You will be doing yourself a favour by turning down the jobs places people you feel ify about.

[Whateverist]

Grass where I was gardening could take far more punishment than other ground cover. My advice would be if you want to walk on it, but it looks patchy and uneven and can't get it to look smooth is to go the other way introduce wild flowers to some parts grow the grass to different heights, some bits treat as a pasture and you could have mown paths through it or if it is a small area you could cut it tightly at the paths edge and then let it graduate into wilderness. A lawn does not have to be conventional, it can have different coloured grasses sown in drifts to make patterns, scented plants like thymes and chamomiles can be planted into it, to add a bit of sensuality into a roll in the hay.

In the portion of my lot beside the house there had been a 30 by 30 foot patch of lawn (mown weeds mostly) which we are trying to turn into a wildflower meadow. It looked its best a few years ago, but boy was it a lot of work - by far more than everything else. I'm still working on that transition, but not as hard as I did that first year.



Now that I'm not mowing the wildflower meadow, I've gotten rid of all the grass on my 100 by 120 foot lot except for one 20 foot diameter circle in the back garden, the favorite toilet of all my bitches. You can see where it's located (northeast corner) in this first photo:



Both of these were taken back before it deteriorated.



This next one was taken three years ago.

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And this next was taken one year ago. It's worse now.

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If you are going to work for yourself, the best advice I got was to, only work in gardens you like. A gardener gets so much work through word and mouth, and it is hard to do a good job in a place you don't like. You will be doing yourself a favour by turning down the jobs places people you feel ify about.

Thanks, that sounds like good advice. I have a friend who is over 70 and still caring for gardens professionally. So perhaps I'll be able to do it too. Maybe I'll even be able to do more design and save what toil I have left in me for my own garden.

[KichigaiNeko]

Kichi: why do you have an outside dunny?

Yes it DOES look like that doesn't it pad?
It is in fact a small vinyl shed (1.0Mx0.7M) to store garden equipment (such as I would need). Our Garage is chokers full of cars and motorbikes so there is no room in there.

Can't wait until the Pyrostegia venusta grows all over it. There is a stone seat and some more plants to go in once I've decided which ones I want that won't become environmental hazardous weeds.

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whateverist... That tree fern is a Dicksonia antarctica harvested from Tasmanian forests. We are contemplating a permanent sail over the area for the summer as the house orientation allows for strong sunlight all day and not the filtered sunlight these plants are accustomed to.