Verging on the verge -and other garden stuff

 A couple of years ago, listening to a permaculture podcast about water and soil, I thought "I have too much brick paving on this block".  It gets hot in summer, it is ugly, it offers nothing for biodiversity. Within days I was on my knees pulling up the brick paving on our verge. The neighbours thought I was insane!

I started stacking bricks up down the driveway. A few at a time, a couple of days a week. The stacks got higher and higher. What on earth was I going to do with them? Fortunately, my son and daughter in law wanted some brick paving at their place, so they took the bricks away and helped me get the last of them up. 

I didn't do much preparation for a garden, apart from spreading a couple of loads of mulch on the top of the compacted yellow sand below the brick paving. The soil was so compacted that I needed an auger to drill through it to start planting. Quite a few things died, but some of them lived and are now thriving. Several more loads of mulch have begun to get the soil organisms growing again. Gradually I realised that I needed to use a sprinkler one morning per week for 10 minutes to keep things alive over our summer. We have a challenging summer!

 The garden keeps growing, though, so when we did the Great Retaining Wall we had leftover rocks. Some of these were bordering the garden near the house, but They were pretty bad at retaining the soil which l fell out onto the path and they were uneven. As part of our retaining wall project, we pulled them up. 

I didn't want the rocks in the garden any more, so we advertised them as "Free" and pretty quickly they were snapped up by someone was happy to get them to use to build a waterfall at their place. 

DH then used the old concrete retaining wall blocks in the old retaining wall on our eastern boundary, and made this lovely wall under the grapevine out the front. 

More Plants!

Over the autumn our city council offered free native seedlings suitable for verge gardens. I got a pack of 10, and planted 9 - gave one away because it was a grevillea and I am allergic to them. They will help to fill up the spaces in the verge garden and will be habitat for wild birds and insects. I am eager to watch them grow now the rains have com. 

The verge still has one extra parking space for visitors. It is well known in the neighbourhood because this is where I put excess produce and people come and help themselves. The limes are followed by grapefruit and lemons and olives. 

On Mother's day I was given 5 kangaroo paws of various colours.  They should do well here, despite the harsh conditions. 

I am hoping to see a lot more pretty verges like this one in our suburb. Maybe this one can  be a bit of inspiration!