A Closer Look At The Mediterranean Garden
My first ever garden project which I started shortly after moving in in 2020 was the Mediterranean Garden. The idea of a very tough, zero water (xeriscape) garden that could take the sun and wind and look as pretty as possible. It's been a pretty hard assignment. It's a big area! (approx 20m x 10m)
I think it looks pretty nice for around 5 months of the year...
Despite a cold and wet spring, summer has arrived. We're about to order in a truck of water as we've had a mere 13mm of rain since the start of December (9 weeks). To put that in perspective, In the month of January, Sydney had 184mm. Brisbane has had 34 mm in the last 4 days. On the 29th of January, Cairns had 194mm in one day! She's dry here. I think all things considered, the Med Garden is looking okay.
Fun fact: Hobart is the second driest capital city in Australia with an annual average of 600mm (about what we get), after number one dry capital: Adelaide with an average of only 550mm!
My inspirations for this garden were:
Beth Chatto Gardens, Essex UK
West Dean Gardens Essex
Great videos on these at The Middle Sized Garden
Australian Landscape Designer, Michael McCoy's home garden
Fabulous website: Michael McCoy
And I wanted a general look of...
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| https://thegardenist.com.au/mid-summer-magic/ |
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| https://thegardenist.com.au/a-dry-summer-not-your-biggest-challenge/ |
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| epicgardening.com |
In around February every year I get the gardening sads with everything getting dry and crispy. Not only this, but all the weeds have dried up and died- so not a great deal of weeding to do, I can't plant or move anything cause I can't keep them watered to get established. It's the time I should be sitting back with a G&T and enjoying the fruits of my labour. Instead I walk through the garden daily wondering what I could do differently next season.
To break up the dryness, I have created a green-screen in the container garden looking out from the patio. Something to catch the eye with some lushness breaking up the browns.
The Good:
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| Eryngium 'Sea Holly" growing between 2 pavers |
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| Newly planted Dichondra 'silver falls' as ground cover |
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| Completely random daisy which I assume came from a seed pack |
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| Magnificent Salvia, so lush, so tough, so beautiful (and so easily propagated) |
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| Casurina glauca 'Cousin It' |
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| Eryngium, I think this might be yuccifolium |
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| Very recently planted, graceful Lomandra 'Evergreen Baby' on a test run to see how it handles in the summer, it it succeeds, I with fill the garden with these. I adore it. |
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| Myoporum parvifolia giving many square meters of green ground cover and happy bees. |
The Less-Good:
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| As you can see from the sheep-farmer's plot, the ground is just dust right now. We love these views so much, but we patiently wait for the Olive trees to mature to help provide shade and windbreak |
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| It's painful when you look at it close up. Everything looks stressed but amazingly, all of these will make it through the summer as they have before. Curling up and getting a little crispy is their natural defence mechanism. I need to mulch, but I'm undecided to regular mulch again or try the gravel-gardens I have been studying as the gravel lasts much longer, keeps the soil cooler and promotes deeper root growth. |
Within this garden I have:
-Poa labillardieri
-Blue Fescue grass Festuca glauca
-Many varieties of thyme
-Veronica
-Lavender: English and French
-Myoporum parvifolium
-Iris
-Seaside Daisy Eryngeron
-English Box Buxus sempervirens
-Box Honeysuckle Lonicera nitida
-3 Olive trees
-Sea Holly Eryngium
-Pittosporum Stephens Island
-Groundcover Grevillea and upright Grevillea
-Oregano
-Weeping Bridal Veil
-Gaura
-Buddlia
-Stipa gigantia
Whoa, I did not think the list would be so long. Over the last 5 years I have been adding and adding to this garden in the hope to give it a year-round fullness. Plants have been from seed, freebies, cuttings, clearance plants with very few full price nursery plants.
Going forward I want to keep incorporating plants that will maintain their green throughout the season. I want more grasses but so far I have struggled with any that remain lush.
I need to give a massive thank you to every online gardener that has shared their garden at this point of the year, when it's not so pretty, when it's simply surviving. Even a year ago, I never would have posted pictures of my garden looking like this, but I have come to realise, that if I want to maintain a sustainable, wildlife friendly, little- to- no- water garden on a $0 budget, it's not going to look perfect all year. It WILL rain again and until then, I must swivel my chair to the tropical garden side of the yard and remain grateful for what I DO have.
Paradise babe!!! 🤩🤩🤩
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