Heleng's Profile

I'm a novice gardener in a foreign climate- so it's all new to me... I live in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. The climate's often called 'Mediterranean'.

We moved to our new house nearly 4 years ago. The garden was planted with roses, hydrangea, gardenia and hibiscus and lovingly maintained by the original owner- but was showing it's age a bit- a lot of very mature plants suffering in the 6th year of drought with heavy restrictions on water use.

We decided to add on to the house and in the process basically destroyed lawns front and back. My English soul was suffering from lack of water by that point so we included installation of an underground rainwater tank which has allowed us to replant a lawn at the back.

The lawn at the front was gone for good though so with lots of advice from a wonderful gardener, I've replanted with drought tolerant 'natives' and it's been a source of joy to see all these plants I'd never heard of get established. we've just had a relatively wet winter and the garden is truly blooming. Now I've just got to keep going....