Dealing with the Mother of Tough Garden Beds

 DESIGN ELEMENTS

When the going gets tough

Many gardeners have a section of their garden that might often see plant failures year after year.
They’ve tried all sorts of plants that claim to be tough as old boots, but still they fail.

Glenice Buck has dealt with one such problem garden bed where she lives and this week starts a series of 3, on how she went about solving the problem.

Glenice explains that the bed is on a slope (see photo below) so the water would just hit the soil and run down the hill.

This garden bed also gets all day sun on heavy clay soil.

Access to water is limited to hand watering. Not ideal considering the busy schedule that Glenice's parents have.

On top of the lack of shade and being baked by hot afternoon summer sun, the soil had been previously used as bit of a driveway and had been compacted by heavy machinery when the house was being build.

Glenice said in her post that 

"This section of garden bed in the rear garden at #thegardenattheberkshires has been the toughest bed I have ever dealt with. Five years on with a lot of work and improvements it is finally starting to fill in and look good. It has been hard to get anything to grow in this area. The reasons for it being a difficult spot to deal with is
 

Tough garden bed at the Berkshires photo Glenice Buck

I'm talking with Glenice Buck Landscape design and Arboriculture consultant. Have a listen

Part2

In the last 5 years Glenice and husband Phil, have made so many improvements to the soil .

• We used a rotary hoe to break up the soil before planting.
• Spread/dug through gypsum and watered in liquid gypsum
• Dug through premium garden soil and compost.
• Mulched the area with fine grade pine bark, sugar cane mulch, straw and tea tree mulch.
• Continued fertilising any new plants with composted animal manure pellets and liquid fertilisers every 2 to 3 months.

She said of the garden that they did this process listed above ,every year for 5 years but it wasn't until the 3 year mark that there was a turn around in plants being able to survive.

Without those years of soil preparation, the plants would not have been able to thrive.

Miscanthus transmorrisonensis

Planting Palette Glenice used for this area - lots of silvers!

• Miscanthus transmorrisonensis-Evergreen Feather grass, evergreen leaves to 80cm tall by 100cm wide fountain-like mounds
• Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’ or Blue Switch grass is special for its dramatic, metallic blue foliage and for its strong upright habit to around 140cm.
• Senecio viravira- a beautiful rounded evergreen shrub with silver-white dissected leaves topped by soft lemon flowers. One of the best silvers. Sun loving and drought tolerant. 80cm x 100cm.
• Artemisia Powis Castle- a hardy, bushy, low growing shrub that has very attractive, soft, silvery grey, deeply divided foliage
• Olea europaea 'Piccolo' suits really tough conditions - drought, frost, poor soil, no irrigation. Grows to 2m

I'm talking with Glenice Buck Landscape design and Arboriculture consultant.

Part 3: The final Countdown

In the last 5 years Glenice and husband Phil, have made so many improvements to the soil .

A very difficult spot that experiences 40 degrees C  temperatures in summer and winter temparatures below 0  and even minus 5 degrees C at times.

A hard clay soil that had been compacted by heavy vehicles driving over part of it for many years.

The planting also included these very tough and hardy plants.

• Teucrium fruiticans- also known as Germander, is a very hardy small evergreen bush in the mint family with grey stems and undersides of the leaves. 1.2m
• Phillyrea angustifolia . Drought, heat, frost and salt tolerant. Phillyrea are olive related which explains their toughness-dark green glossy leaf with serrated edge, making a contrast to the other silvers in the bed. Height to 2.5m, slow growing. Alternative to English box. can be kept to under 1m in height
• Aloes
• Other succulents
• Beschoneria yuccoides-Mexican lily, is a perennial succulent with a rosette of slender strap-like leaves that can grow to 1m in length. 
• Rhagodia spinescens Salt bush-Small, native shrub with silvery, grey triangular foliage growing to approximately 1.5m. Tolerates all soil types and coastal conditions
• Atriplex nummularia, commonly called Old Man Saltbush, a large grey shrub to 2 m tall and to 4-5 m wide, with brittle woody branches

Glenice said in her post that

We used a rotary hoe to break up the soil before planting.
Spread/dug through gypsum and watered in liquid gypsum
Dug through premium garden soil and compost.
Mulched the area with fine grade pine bark, sugar cane mulch, straw and tea tree mulch.
Continued fertilising any new plants with composted animal manure pellets and liquid fertilisers every 2 to 3 months.

Continued to give any plants in the area a deep slow water by hand to ensure they receive a good amount of water closest their roots.

Garden at the Berkshires-photo Glenice Buck

• Selected plants that will cope with the tough conditions that area hot and dry conditions.
• Over planted the slope- I planted out all the plants with closer spacing than recommended as they will help protect and buffer each other in this tough location. They will grow, settle in and get established more quickly together.
• When you're dealing with tough locations like this you also need to have patience and give the garden soil time to take in all these improvements. Soil preparation is very important and you should try to hold off planting before the soil is ready - haha! try telling a gardener to do that when there is open soil / spare space in the garden. I didn't wait!

I'm talking with Glenice Buck Landscape designer and Arboriculture consultant.

www.glenicebuckdesigns.com.au