It has taken many years to get the path to the marquee pad looking lovely. At first I wasn't allowed to make a path there. It caused me a certain amount of pain, because a path there seemed to be logical. The area was full of the invasive periwinkle and the old fig tree was being smothered on the right side and nothing except weeds and a strange old iron frame existed on the left side. An old Pandorea was struggling to grow over this. But I wanted a path there, least of all because it made life easier for me. We had morning tea on the marquee pad and that was the short way to get there. Below is the sneaky little clearing, but with no development whatsoever. Just a way through.
Then I started working on the left hand side, weeding, pulling up the periwinkle and trying to make the Pandorea grow nicely on what I called 'the old mattress springs.' That's what the edifice looked like, just the metal innards of a mattress. Behind was kind of an old chicken coop, which I initially used as a compost heap.
Last year, a wonderful event happened. We decided to work as a team to weed around the marquee pad and plant a mainly blue/silver/cream garden. That proved a huge success and has within this year grown into a beautiful spot. At the same time, the pruning expert had a go at the 150 year old fig tree (on the right below) and made a lovely shape out of it, retaining all the old parts and renovating them, as it were. More about that part of the garden in another post, later in the year.
So, we still had morning tea on the marquee pad, but now we had a view to the path I had now made. We could see the horrible old metal frame as a feature. The other gardeners agreed with me that the area would look quite wonderful without it and we finally had permission to get rid of it. This gave me an opportunity to make a 'secret path' through there to the olive grove on the left hand side. On the other side, I continued the garden that had been planted on the marquee pad, but changing the colour scheme to add pink as well. That is still growing and should be good pretty soon. At the moment, it is still trying.
Last year, a wonderful event happened. We decided to work as a team to weed around the marquee pad and plant a mainly blue/silver/cream garden. That proved a huge success and has within this year grown into a beautiful spot. At the same time, the pruning expert had a go at the 150 year old fig tree (on the right below) and made a lovely shape out of it, retaining all the old parts and renovating them, as it were. More about that part of the garden in another post, later in the year.
So, we still had morning tea on the marquee pad, but now we had a view to the path I had now made. We could see the horrible old metal frame as a feature. The other gardeners agreed with me that the area would look quite wonderful without it and we finally had permission to get rid of it. This gave me an opportunity to make a 'secret path' through there to the olive grove on the left hand side. On the other side, I continued the garden that had been planted on the marquee pad, but changing the colour scheme to add pink as well. That is still growing and should be good pretty soon. At the moment, it is still trying.
The above photo was taken this week. The olive mulchings are being used on the path. Each side has grown more but you can't see the secret path on the left from there. I have used plant that flower in red, orange, yellow and white in that spot. It is already looking cheery and is almost good enough to feature in my next post. I'm just waiting for more mulching on the path. Can you see the tiny blossoms on the 150-60 year old pear tree? It is going to look gorgeous this year.
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