A FEW MORE STEPS
For Sarah the Gardener to make ‘The Palace’ a reality, there’s plenty of hard work to be done.
It would seem building a ‘palace’ can be quite ambitious. In my head it seems so simple. But what is missing from this dream is a little thing called reality, which quickly brings attention to the concepts of time, effort and opportunity. Often these have factors themselves that are beyond our control.
As much as I would love to get this garden finished so I can enjoy it, I have to remind myself that the gardening journey, no matter how frustrating at times, is also one to be enjoyed. I don’t think I have bitten off more than I can chew with The Palace (a grand multi-roomed garden on a rare flat piece of land), but more that my eyes are bigger than my stomach. But at the end of the day, slow and steady will win the race, if you’ll allow me to mix my metaphors.
The first starting point, began long ago, with gathering the plants. I knew making a rosemary hedge would require a lot of plants and I’m pleased I started taking cuttings from my rosemary plant early on, with no idea of how many I’d need. At that point it was just an idea, not a plan marked out on paper. I started with 100 cuttings. On experiencing the inevitable percentage of failures, I took more cuttings, a couple more times, just to make sure I’d have enough. Now the garden has been planned, with measurements.
For a good rosemary hedge, a planting distance of 45cm is a sensible distance.
The hedge will be between 20–30m long, depending on how far I want to take the path leading to the next garden room, so I
Sarah the Gardener used to garden in the swamp in the northern Waikato, until the decision to move took her 10 minutes up the road to the wild west coast, where she recreated her 36 raised bed vege garden with a few modifications.
will probably only need between 44 and 67 plants according to the online hedge calculator I found (who knew there was such a thing?!).
The next starting point was the ‘cement-mâché’ feature rock. To be honest, I did procrastinate over this for a while as it seemed so huge an undertaking, not just due to its colossal size. With Hubby the Un-gardener’s help, I drew a shape on a plywood base that didn’t look too unnatural, then we elevated the board, not only to put it at a comfortable working height, but also so we could insert rebar that will eventually be driven into the ground to anchor the rock – we do get strong winds here, and this won’t be as heavy as a real rock. Once the rebar was in place, set at jaunty angles for a natural look, we wrapped chicken wire around the outside and secured it to the outline on the wood.
My inability to grasp mathematical concepts associated with spatial awareness is pretty much common knowledge these days. So, it was a surprise to me that a shape that was 1.2m across used up the best part of a 5m roll of chicken wire.
We then smooshed the chicken wire to give it character. I did worry it wouldn’t look natural enough; however, in my extensive research looking longingly at rocks out the car window, it would seem anything goes when it come to rock shape and size. So, I set about with what would become a daily routine.
I cut an old fluffy sheet set into small pieces, made a very wet 50:50 cement and sand mix in an ice-cream container, and soaked enough fabric in it to sop up the liquid. I then attached each piece of fabric to the chicken wire. I found it was best not to make the pieces too big or they would then fall off due to their weight, plus the smaller pieces responded well to the contours of the chicken wire. It took more than six weeks to cover the structure in fabric!
Then it was ready for a couple of coats of cement to remove all trace of the fabric and
make it look more rock-like. But this is just phase one and it’s only half the height it needs to be. I need more chicken wire... and I may need to convince Hubby the Un-gardener we need more bed linen!
With the rock underway, I turned my attention to sourcing bricks for the courtyard area that would radiate outwards from the rock and pave the way to The Palace. Bricks don’t appear to be the throwaway item they once were and now have a value that could have blown my budget right out of the water. Initially, I wanted those old ones with no holes in them, but in the end I found some lovely terracotta bricks. The effort of moving them was exhausting, and I have to confess to leaving them in the back of Hubby the Un-gardener’s vehicle for as long as I could before he needed to go somewhere and couldn’t use my car for the trip. They are now all nicely stacked beside my garden office, but I’ll need to move them again at some point to get them up the stairs and into
The Palace.
The final part is something I have learnt (the hard way) must always be a key preparatory feature: the windbreak. For this one, I needed to remove a strip of kikuyu grass from beside where the path will be. At first it seemed quite daunting as the area was wild and overgrown. However, once you understand how it grows, removing kikuyu grass becomes easy.
From my observations, it would seem kikuyu is self-mulching and a dense sward of grass only comes from a few stems. The invasive rhizomes themselves are a mat of tangled, thick, horizontal stems about 15–20cm deep. But in sandy soil, when chopped with a spade into manageable chunks, they are easy enough to shake free. Beyond this appear to be thin feeder roots that are easily separated from the mat and pulled free. I took every care to ensure no fragments of rhizome were left behind to create a clean soil so the Muehlenbeckia complexa (pōhuehue) wouldn’t have to compete with the grass as it scrambles up the windbreak. To stop the rhizomes from other areas creeping into the clean soil, I have created a barrier from clear corrugated roofing sheets cut into 30–40cm slices and buried to soil level. Hopefully, that will work nicely.
Aside from finishing the rock and removing the rest of the kikuyu grass (which has been beneath black plastic for ages, so how hard could it be?) the actual assembly part of the garden is tantalisingly close.
OPPOSITE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The framework for the rock; Phase one of the rock is complete – now it just needs a smooth outer coating and a top half; A grand total of 655 bricks stacked up ready to be moved to The Palace; These terracotta bricks should do the job nicely; Slowly but surely, the rock building begins.