Bowling Club Entrance - Border Renovation

Following on from my Wardian Case project Finn suggested that I renovate the Bowling Club Entrance border. The existing plants were not performing well and were starting to look messy and untended. As this is one of the entrances to Otari-Wilton's Bush it deserved a make over to create a more welcoming and inviting border.

Here are the 'Before' photos:

Here was the entrance border before any work started. The sign board was very
overshadowed by the large fern tree and woodland behind it. The sun is positioned
behind the trees so it is always dark in this corner.

Overgrown Kawakawas encroached on the edge of the boarder, with a few
sporadic Rengarenags and Chatham Island forget-me nots.

The Astelia Chathamica needed a good cleanover to remove the dead leaves, and the
Rengerengas was overgrown and had spread throughout most of the border.
The Corokia hedge at he back also needed trimming.

 There were three mature sized Astelia Chathamicas which I quite liked and were in good condition, once that dead leaves had been clean up. So I decided to keep them and work with the silvery colour of the leaves to add some lightness to the dark border.

Cleared border! I removed all the Rengarengas and forget-me-nots.
Finn cut back a lot of the overgrown tree and kawakawas from the
 back of the border and behind the signpost as well.
The area suddenly had a lot more light and felt more open.

I forked over the soil and removed all the weeds then raked it smooth.
This gave me a good indication of what the soil conditions were
 in the border. There was patches are very dry soil need the
 hedge and very damp soil right underneath the drip line of the
fern tree. The rest of the soil was of a good loamy quality.

I good the hedging shears and clipped the Corokia hedge. I quite like
 the silvery colour of this hedge, it certainly lightens up the space.
It is quite satisfying to trim a hedge and see a neat
smooth line after i've finished.

Finn and Dave cleared a lot of material from the rest of the path and
 beyond with the intention of opening up the space and planted
decorative shrubs in place of the old kawakawa hedge.

Now that I could see the space and what the remaining plants were like, I could now develop my planting scheme. Using the silver of the Astelia and Corokia hedge, and the research I had already done for my white garden display, it seemed a logical step to create a Silver and Gold garden.
I wanted to use the Pacystegia I has selected for my white garden, but Finn showed me a few that he had planted in a similarly dark area and they just hadn't performed very well, so I chose an alternative plant instead. Brachyglottis greyi - it has silvery pale foliage most of the year and then flowers with bright yellow daisies.
I also chose Pimilia protrata - for its pale foliage and small white flowers, its spreading habit should fill up the lower front of the border.
Interspersed with the pimilia, I planted clumps of Schlernathus biflorus - this has a much more vivid green to contract against the other pale plants, it will spread in spongy mounds.
Behind that, Hebe albicans, my new favourite hebe. It has a neat round form with white flower spikes, gowing to less than 1m high. a good foreground shrub.
Alternating next to the hebes, an Olearia with a deep green leaf with a white margin (whose species name has slipped my mind).
Behind this is the golden grass Libertia perigrines, to add a touch of gold all year round.
To block the view of the bowling club from the garden's path, I put in tall growing Oleaia avicenniaefolia. These should grow fairly quickly and bring the view back into the garden instead of out over the hedge into next doors carpark.

Before planting anything, I laid them all out into the positions I wanted
and making sure they each had the correct spacings for the future growth.

Et voila!! One newly designed and planted border.

Now I just need to come back in a year and see how well they have grown and if they are happy in their positions. I'm very pleased with this.

Wardian Case - White Garden - Completion

After deciding on my final plants and selecting them from the nursery, I potted them up into presentation terracotta pots with grey gravel mulch.
The climbing plant that I chose, Tecomanthe speciosa, was more of a challenge to pot up. We did not have a young plant in the nursery, so instead I took a cutting from a mature plant. This was not ideal because it was not likely to survive very long in a pot, but for the purpose of completing the temporary display it would have to suffice.

Here is the final case.

Once the case was cleaned up and fresh plants put in, it looked great. I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Here is the display signs I made for the case. Using a combination of Word and Photoshop to create the graphics. I tried to keep the explanation simple as I knew I had limited space, and I feel I could have elaborated a lot more on the design techniques. However, the more text there is the less likely people are to stand and read it. So I kept it short and simple.

I was pleased with the layout of these pages. I was aiming for a magazine style spread with visible text boxes, bite- sized info, and basic care instructions.

Overall I was rather pleased with the whole project and really enjoy it. I like garden design and would happily do more design projects again. Selecting plants to fit in a specific environment is interesting, and great for learning more about particular plants. Its not as simple as just picking a few attractive plants and putting them all together because they might need different care and watering. Plants need to be selected carefully with long term growth kept in mind.