Nzgreenfingers's Profile

A lady who loves gardening and does Oamaru Stone sculpturing. :>) We have a very small garden with lots of interesting features. Our veg garden is planted in mussel floats and pots, with a few tomatoes planted in the bark garden.
When my husband and I moved here in May 2004, the pittosporum hedges were nearly 5 metres high and the house could not be seen from the road, so our first task in the garden, was to get them down to a manageable height and thin out a large amount of deadwood. The lowering was done in two stages. We had a massive amount of trimmings from these trees and put as much as we could through our small garden shredder. The larger pieces we left to be shredded by a contractor. The garden around the house we covered with another 6 cubic metres of bark. A good layer of pea-straw had been put under the thinning bark by the previous owner. This made it so easy to do, what I call ‘2-finger weeding’.
We have added the stepping stones and riverstone path, to walk around the house starting at the right of the gazebo. There are a few surprises. First, you will pass my first attempts at topiary. The box trees were here and I couldn’t resist the temptation to have a go. (Not so good from the back view though.) The huge Gunnera at the back of the gazebo we have now pulled out . Since we found out that they are a becoming a ‘pest’ we were removing the massive seed-heads, which appeared very early with the re-growth. It got hit very badly by the frost and all that was left in the winter is a ‘trunk-like’ spread on the ground. Amazingly it only took 2 months to reach a massive size but it became a problem disposing of the soggy leaves when they were hit by frost, so we have taken it out.
There used to be a large tree, (which we thought was a beech), near the corner of the house by the meter-box . Sadly we had to remove that tree as the roots were too close to the drains by the new bedroom addition. A small straggly off-shoot of the tree started to grow, so after our trip to England a couple of years ago, with a stop-over in Singapore, I decided to have a go at trimming the tree, like they do to so many trees in Singapore. This was only done a last year, so it is only in its early stage yet, but is taking shape quite nicely.
We made huge piles of the shredded material from the hedge and over the last 5 years, as the bark has thinned, we have spread the piles over the top and this year we covered it again with another 7 cubic metres of bark.
There was a gigantic flax and untold agapanthus in the garden in front of the main terrace and these we removed the first summer after we moved in. I had always wanted to have box hedges, so at last I got my wish and started at this garden with 1 dozen bought plants, then rearing the rest from my own cuttings. We added the water feature and most of the plants in this front garden were planted by us. Our garden doesn’t have a theme, we just plant the things we like. It does look amazing when the rhododendrons and azaleas and camellias in flower, which do give a lovely show in the spring.
I also hope you like some of my Oamaru stone sculptures. I only took up this hobby in 2005 and although I still have a lot to learn, I am really enjoying my new found hobbie.