It’s been almost four years now since we moved to a house closer to the centre of our suburb. The house was a bit of a mixed bag – great location close to everything, but hadn’t been touched much since a renovation in the ’70’s – including the yard. We’ve been able to renovate most of the downstairs, but when it comes to the yard, we’ve mostly been treading water.
There are hints that the yard was landscaped years ago by someone who know what they were doing and was quite nice – there’s quite a few food plants (apples, lemons, oranges, feijoas, currants…), flowers sprout up out of nowhere, and there lots of overgrown garden beds and grown-over hardscaping. There’s also a lot invasive weeds, tradescantia in particular, that are trying to take over large parts. With the way things grow in New Zealand, we have mostly just tried to tread water with the yard and keep it from becoming completely overgrown.
To start getting a handle on it we recently had a landscape designer by to put together a plan that we could start to gradually work on. It’ll help us get started on some work now (such as putting in some fast growing plants where we removed the greenhouse to screen us from the neighbours), while making sure we’re not planting things in places where the plan calls for a patio for example.
One of the great things about the yard is that the plants are very established. There’s a good mix of native plants as well. We have some fern trees, a kowhai and a big puriri, and we regularly have tui and piwakawaka (fantails) swooping around. We’ve even had visits from a kaka and a kereru! Our plan is to keep to planting natives as much as possible going forward, and hopfully in a few years all the chipping away will turn into a thriving spot to spend time in.
Kiwi Bound 