Front garden spring makeover progress

Sponsored by Masters

Our front garden spring makeover has great promise!

A before and after of the garden is a bit premature since we’ve only just planted the garden. It needs time to grow. You can however see some before shots HERE.

It might not look like much at the moment because the plants are fairly small… but, in time, with plenty of water and fertiliser we will have a beautiful screening hedge. Jason and I couldn’t be happier.

The wire fence  on the side is a bit of an eyesore, so it will be great to have a nice green and leafy screen

The plants are quite small but we know we have time on our side

It really is a great time of year to get stuck into the garden before the summer heat really stings us. We’re not looking forward to yet another hot summer - we’re glad we’ve tackled this front garden project while the weather is still relatively mild.

Nice and easy is how we like to do things around here, so shopping online with Masters Home Improvements was just the ticket. The Masters Click and Collect service is quite awesome. After I ordered and paid for all of our gardening requirements online one evening, I received an email the next day to say it was ready to pick up.

Loading all the gardening things into the car

You pretty much just go to the Masters store with your order number and within about 10 minutes everything is wheeled out to you on a trolley. And in our case a very big trolley! In and out within 25 minutes… by the time everything was strategically loaded into the back of the car, of course.

So what did we order?

We ordered 20 Murraya plants (14cm) to create a border up one side of a boundary fence. At $5 a pop, the plants are a nice tidy investment for the garden.

Twenty murrayas squeezed in the back of the Subaru

We also ordered a couple of bags of blood and bone to help condition the soil and help fertilise the plants when it came time to plant the little blighters.

Sugar can mulch from Masters

Bales of sugar cane mulch were another must-have for our garden.  I underestimated how much we would need and had to go back a few days later to get three more bales.  Masters has a ‘three bales for $30’ deal which is not bad compared to other hardware places.

Mulching all of our garden beds has really tidied up the front yard. It will keep the weeds at bay, retain the moisture in the soil and will help our new plants thrive.

A good hose makes a good gardener

We bought a new hose to replace a very badly kinked hose that annoyed me every time I used it. The old hose was thrown away and replaced with a shiny new orange hose.  Good hoses make good gardeners is our theory…let’s hope we can prove it!

We also like using a soaker hose when new plants are being established. The 15 metre soaker hose is just the right length for watering all the new Murrayas along the side fence.

Next month when the plants have settled in, I will start to fertilise them with a soluble fertiliser to give them a boost during the growing season and alternate with either a fish emulsion fertiliser or seaweed-based product.

Now all we need is plenty of rain to help our new garden grow. I hope to show you more photos in the next few months to see how everything has fared over the growing season. Stay tuned.