[ EXPERT ADVICE]
If a garden is in harmony with the environment and climate, you’ll have less maintenance, with happy plants. Brenda Niehaus of Fern Design and Lily Landscaping offers advice:
• Look at your surroundings and first plant in your own garden what occurs naturally in the area. This repetition ensures that the garden and its immediate surroundings form a cohesive whole. This applies to plants as well as stones for pathways. • Compile a plant list. No matter how long it is, make a list of everything you’d like to use. Start with the indigenous vegetation and then add alternatives. If you go for alternatives, make sure they’re workable options – they should be able to adapt to the climate and rainfall. Also keep in mind the amount of wind and frost that your garden gets. Then choose plants you love that will cope with the climate. But don’t select too many – a smaller plant selection ensures greater impact; if you have too many different plants, the garden will look cluttered and the feel you want to create will be lost.
• With the right plant choice, maintenance is easy and kept to the minimum. We only cut off the tops of the grasses occasionally and rake the grass clippings lightly with our hands. A week later, you can’t even see that they’ve been cut. If plants and even trees (that occur naturally in the area) come up on their own in the garden, they are left as is. • Group together plants with the same water needs. This garden only has an irrigation system in the area closest to the house and where we planted lawn.
The rest takes care of itself.
• Stones that were on the erf and in the veld were used for pathways; this was supplemented with stones from The Rock King.
• Make the most of the views of the “borrowed landscape” – that which is outside your erf but visible from the garden. This makes the garden seem more spacious, and if your garden complements the surroundings, all the better! >>
CONTACT 083 442 0963, brenda.fernlily@gmail.com
sun shimmers on the The garden is so beautiful, especially when the grass in the early morning and late afternoon, creating the most amazing visual effects. – Ilinda
1 A wall of gabions hides the water tanks; in front of it are crane flowers, fairy bells, wild garlic and gazanias.
2 Quirky garden art creates an element of surprise among the grasses. Sculpture from Gonk
3 The gravel driveway enhances the garden’s carefully planned aesthetic. The embankment on one side creates privacy between the Du Preez’s erf and their neighbours. Soil excavated during the building process was used to create the embankment. “We enriched the soil with a thin layer of compost and Talborne Vita Grow 2:3:2. To hold it in place, we put down hessian and secured that with wooden pegs. Then I clambered up the embankment in my hiking boots to sow a MayFord grass seed mixture specifically for this area. Wild olive trees were planted in strategic spots on the embankment to create the impression that it has always been there. Low-growing vlei rush flanks both sides of the driveway.
4 Rhodes grass is a perennial clump-forming grass that thrives in damp areas.