LESSONS LEARNT
One of my biggest garden failures was the avenue of Sydney red gums (Angophora costata) I planted along my driveway. I was aiming to create a grand entrance, like that seen at Cruden Farm (Dame Elisabeth Murdoch’s former home in Langwarrin, Victoria), where 100 stately gums line the driveway. After advice from a native plant specialist, I chose the trees for their ability to take the dry conditions on the high side of the driveway and wet feet on the lower.
Well, the ones on the lower side failed to thrive, and after two years, the tubes I’d planted had hardly grown at all. Putting it down to root competition from the kikuyu grass, which grew in from the neighbour’s spring-fed gully, I waged war on the weed for about four years – repeatedly sheet mulching and solarising, and burning it with a large commercial flame weeder. Then, when I thought I’d won, I planted larger tree specimens to try to match the ones on the high side of the driveway, which had grown well. These still failed to thrive. You’d think I’d know better (and, yes, I did say in part 4 of this series to go for smaller specimens because they establish better…), but I was determined to succeed.
My ‘Aha!’ moment came when a tree expert pointed out that Angophora does take wet feet in Sydney, but in summer when it’s warm, not in winter, when it’s cold and frosty in my climate. Eventually, I realised I just needed to stop and let the grass grow, and the other trees that did grow were magnificent all by themselves, and didn’t need a matching row below them to look beautiful.