Help guys and girls!!

[kevincanweld]

Hey guys and girls. We currently are trying to jazz up our front yard in our new home. We live in a hot part of Australia. We are at a total loss for ideas as to what we can do?! Ideally we would get decking where the bricks currently lay, but we don't have the sort of money. Currently we have concrete edging as you can see, but that's about it. Cut a long story short, our landscapers have given us the run around and we are trying to get a refund as they never came back to finish the job. Please help us with ideas!!!

 

[kevincanweld]

Photos

 

[Tetters]

G'day Kevin, and welcome to the forum. The photos may not have worked at the moment, but I have a good imagination, and have lived north shore Sydney, and near the blue mountains via Riverstone. I have visited and stayed also in Adelaide which is of course at least 4 hours or so from where you are and it gets much hotter the further inland you go. My kids are in Queensland and Tasmania.
My advice at the moment would be firstly to look carefully at your surroundings and make sure your fire breaks are as good as they can be. Great if you have town water? We were on a tank Work from the house outwards, and put in all the necessary bits like sheds and outhouses. Then choose a place to make the first flower garden or vegetable patch, with shade in mind. Make a cool place to sit and laze in this area (that's very important) you'll always need a thinking and planning area. The rest will all happen naturally.
Hope it all goes well, good luck with it and mostly enjoy it. Gardens are so important to our well being.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Shame about the photos. As it is the front you probably want to make it respectable asap. Easiest way I know to do that cheaply is grass. I don't know what sort, but there is some sort of grass that will grow in almost any climate outside Antarctica, you will have to check local sources. Getting the ground ready is the hard work, and grass seed is cheap. The beauty is that as you go on you can do things like cut flower beds out of it , stand pots on it, or grow bushes in it, it gives you a tidy, respectable looking blank canvas to draw on and develop.

 

[kevincanweld]

 

[kevincanweld]

Photos

 

[kevincanweld]

Shame about the photos. As it is the front you probably want to make it respectable asap. Easiest way I know to do that cheaply is grass. I don't know what sort, but there is some sort of grass that will grow in almost any climate outside Antarctica, you will have to check local sources. Getting the ground ready is the hard work, and grass seed is cheap. The beauty is that as you go on you can do things like cut flower beds out of it , stand pots on it, or grow bushes in it, it gives you a tidy, respectable looking blank canvas to draw on and develop.

Yes grass is defineatly a good option. We are just unsure as to where to put it. And also with the bricks whether to remove and add gravel or planter boxes etc.

 

[kevincanweld]

G'day Kevin, and welcome to the forum. The photos may not have worked at the moment, but I have a good imagination, and have lived north shore Sydney, and near the blue mountains via Riverstone. I have visited and stayed also in Adelaide which is of course at least 4 hours or so from where you are and it gets much hotter the further inland you go. My kids are in Queensland and Tasmania.
My advice at the moment would be firstly to look carefully at your surroundings and make sure your fire breaks are as good as they can be. Great if you have town water? We were on a tank Work from the house outwards, and put in all the necessary bits like sheds and outhouses. Then choose a place to make the first flower garden or vegetable patch, with shade in mind. Make a cool place to sit and laze in this area (that's very important) you'll always need a thinking and planning area. The rest will all happen naturally.
Hope it all goes well, good luck with it and mostly enjoy it. Gardens are so important to our well being.

Hello mate. Thanks for the welcome. Appreciate it. Good advice mate. Yes we are in town, so we have water etc. That's not a problem and we are pretty close to the Murray River. I have managed to upload some images mate, so have a look and you can see what we are dealing with. Thanks in advance

 

[kevincanweld]

G'day Kevin, and welcome to the forum. The photos may not have worked at the moment, but I have a good imagination, and have lived north shore Sydney, and near the blue mountains via Riverstone. I have visited and stayed also in Adelaide which is of course at least 4 hours or so from where you are and it gets much hotter the further inland you go. My kids are in Queensland and Tasmania.
My advice at the moment would be firstly to look carefully at your surroundings and make sure your fire breaks are as good as they can be. Great if you have town water? We were on a tank Work from the house outwards, and put in all the necessary bits like sheds and outhouses. Then choose a place to make the first flower garden or vegetable patch, with shade in mind. Make a cool place to sit and laze in this area (that's very important) you'll always need a thinking and planning area. The rest will all happen naturally.
Hope it all goes well, good luck with it and mostly enjoy it. Gardens are so important to our well being.

And yes mate, gardens are good for the soul aernt they!!!

 

[Tetters]

all the answers lie in the soil!! Next question from me is - what do you want to grow? What do you want to use your little garden for? Do you entertain a lot or are you an avid veggie grower (most sensible while the shops there seem short of veggies) I know, I went to Woolies the other day online to treat my son in Toowoomba to a weeks groceries, and the shelves seem worse there than they are here. Are you new to gardening?

 

[Oliver Buckle]

The nice thing about grass is that you can just do everything with it, and then when you decide to have something else somewhere just turn it over and it rots to compost, or if it is paviours or bricks lift it, stack it and it leaves a nice hole to put your sand base into and turns into compost where it is stacked.