Happy Birthday Garden

Today is a special day in my world.  It is one year today since I got started on my garden.  Before this it was a grazed by cows who didn’t appreciate the best view out across the ocean.  But we appreciated the view and set up camp in the caravan, right where I wanted to put the garden, while we were waiting for the house to arrive.  The shipping  container with all our worldly possessions also took up space on my soon to be garden, which also became a parking lot, building delivery store yard and a dump for the building debris.

The old garden in the swamp

The site of the new garden

To ensure I had good soil I took six truckloads of swamp soil with me.

The wood arrived ready for the raised beds.

It felt so good to see things getting started

Not only was the ground levelled but it evicted every trace of the kikuyu grass – roots and all!

It was nice to have a big big blank canvas to work with.

I’m not all that great with spatial awareness so I laid out the garden first to see how I liked it.

Then I began the process of building all 36 raised beds

But once the house arrived and we moved in, and I couldn’t bear it any longer and organised for the caravan to move off the garden, the container to be emptied and returned to the container company and I cleared up the rubbish and forbade anyone to park anywhere near my soon to be horticultural paradise.  Then in came the bulldozer and cleared the land and my garden began.  Since then the veggie patch has gone in leaps and bounds and it blows me away how much I have achieved since then and my garden is almost there and looks pretty much like the vision I held in my head for such a long time.

It started to come together

A digger was a faster way to fill the beds

I was able to prepare the beds for planting

The beds were irrigated

The dome was built

Without glass in the dome I had to do some window sill germinating

The fence was built with the aim to keep rabbits, hare and deer out of the garden

And I went on to have a productive growing season.

Finally the dome was done.

Check out my birthday greeting for the garden, I thought it was about time to update the trailer on my You Tube Channel and this seems like the best time to do it.

But a year in the life of a garden is barely a blink and I still have so many awesome plans for this land and it is such a wonderful place to live, we will be here for a very long time.

Come again soon – this garden has had a great first year.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)

NB – click on the images for descriptions of the garden progress.