LOOKING BETTER EVERY DAY

Brenda scrubbed the path, its ready
to be sealed (when the rain stops), its looking beautiful.
It took us the whole day to put up the boundary wall, sorting and washing stones. The stones we ordered are too small, so it took forever. But worth it in the end, I did not actually finish....

Finally we have a front wall and everything looks neater, we have started the pergola and the screen is up between us and the wetland garden. Hennie and I spent hours measuring the curves hoping to have a window behind the sleeper bench, am not sure what went wrong. Clearly we have measuring isues.

Its getting exciting. Our fynbos is leaving Cape Town today so we can start planting next week.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT OUR BEAUTIFUL BOUNDARY WALL

COASTAL SUPPLIES GARDEN DESIGN

We worked against the weather all day, but were determined to finish the pebble path and did. We thought we would finish at lunch time, but then discovered how hard it is to plaster. The cement kept falling off the step! Everyone else was completely oblivious of our frustration and stress levels, and interupted us all day asking advice and borrowing all our tools, all day every day
(hence the title) I guess I dont mind usually but today it was too much. We kept running out of stones. The stones we oredered were really ugly, Brenda andI found pebbles in an old pond in the graveyard full of old rotten water. After that they all have to be scrubbed and then wet when laid. My hands are like prunes today.
I am sure Hennies sinuses are completely clogged with cement.


The cemcrete paint samples came today. Not sure if we have the right colours. The light grey is too light, but Ilike it. The dark grey is not right and the sea green too cold mmmmmm.... tomorrows problem. Time is really running short, we have so much to do!

We will finish and it will be fabulous, I know it. Til tomorrow.

ALL IN A DAYS WORK

I was so excited about the pebbles I had to put it up first. Here are the pics of the preparation.
I think we only stopped for lunch at 3! Enjoy.

The exciting news is that Tracy is having her baby tomorrow. His name is Ethan, we all cant wait.
And put a few pebbles in the concrete for him today. We wish you all the best tomorrow Tracy.
I miss your photograhic skills as I can't sit still for long enough to click.

THE PEBBLE PATHWAY

We finally started the pebble path,
we're using a Cemcrete product called Decocrete which holds the stones better, (we'll see tomorrow).

It looks fantastic, I cant wait for tomorrow to carry on. All the preparation has really been worth it.
I'll upload pics of the preparation.
But we are on a roll now, there is still so much to do and the deadline is two weeks time!!!! I hope you are all holding thumbs for us.

LEVELS LEVELS

Getting the levels right is a nightmare.
We finally got help from Mike
(lecturer) You take a long plank
and balance it across all the paths at once and then check the levels.
So its done now. We laid the bricks for the front step and today we start the concrete pebbled pathway........
Stay with me its getting exciting.

The sleeper bench - how beautiful?

Our bench is finished. We still need to sand the top of the sleepers.
On the right of it will be the Olive tree. The honeysuckle looks so lovely behind it. We had ordered the September bush to go there
(Polygala Myrtifola) but fortunately it was not available in a decent size, because this looks so perfect. We still need to raise it at the back.

Quite a few of the plants we ordered are not available, so we have to reconsider the plant list. When I have time I will put the list up for those of you that are interested.

MARKING OUT THE PATHWAYS

On Saturday we started to mark out the garden according to the plan. The pathways are quite tricky, we used pegs and strings at the right lengths to mark out the circles. The hardboard is used to define the edges and the ground level. The one path will be filled with gravel and the other cement and pebbles.

We struggled with the levels. Our fron wall will be made with stone cages, but they have not arrived yet. We ran out of hardboard so decided to put up the bench. This involved putting together wirecages filling them with stones and levelling two sleepers. If you ever do this, fill the center of the cage with bricks so you dont use too many stones- it gets expensive.

Choosing the Olive Tree (Olea europea subsp africanus)

The big trees are all in the graveyard, naturally its first come first serve, we found two that were slightly crooked which we liked as they looked windswept as most trees do in the Cape.
Then Hennie lifted these huge trees on a trolley and we pushed them up the slope to the nursery. In the end I am not sure if I was pushing or hanging on. It was hilarious - I was exhausted for the rest of the day. Fortunately when we got to the top Hannes had arrived to help offload. See how easy it is to lift big trees when you use two poles. After that I needed a coke moment. Tracy got to enjoy sitting under the olive trees and help us learn the names of a few plants every day.

Today, Thursday was a disaster, it poured and poured, we were trying to lay a foundation and level ground. It was impossible, we went home early, I really felt as if we were losing momentum today... but we'll get there.

YESTERDAY

It was lovely to have Brenda with us yesterday. We were so busy but seem to have gotten very little done. We were mostly busy with our orders, checking what has come what is not available, finding replacements... Sadly we cant have Maple trees in our Shade garden.
The water feature has changed, no bamboo, so were were in the graveyard looking for gumpoles for the pergola and so it carried on.

We started to mark out the Fynbos garden and started to lay the pond and were told it was not level by the lecturer, so out it came!

Lets talk about the Graveyard

The Graveyard is the scrapyard where the compost, bricks, river sand, gumpoles, sleepers, palettes, basically everything that has nowhere to be put goes there.

The workshop is also there, tunnels storing plants and all the big trees are there aswell. This is all at the bottom of this slope. You will see a round roof on the bottom left. What you need to understand is we cart everything up this slope all day, I think we walk down there about 10 times a day.

DAY5

Today we marked out the site for our display garden - this will be a shade garden called Shade Shifters. The rush was to make use of the BOBCAT while it was available to cart soil.
We built the boundaries with sleepers - no easy task I can tell you!

Carting sleepers, lifting sleepers, cutting sleepers, levelling sleepers - its all hard work, ask Tracy she watched us and made sure everything was straight. But we did it and got quite far.

The site is marked out and there is enough soil there, so Brenda and I will level the soil and the sleepers tomorrow. From now on we will work on both sites.

Will keep you posted

DAY 4

On Friday the site smelt like a dairy farm from all the wet compost!

We carried on shovelling compost for most of the day and you will see the stands are filling up much faster now. We still have to mark out the stands for our second gardenand fill those up as well.

We built our wall along the west perimeter, 3 bricks high and straight - yes we're very proud of it. Thanks to Hennie I learnt to lay bricks properly. But building the wall is the easy part.The next thing is to start the pebbled pathway. We hadn't really talked about how we would build it when we did the drawings or the ordering for that matter. That required a long debate. You will see from the photos, there are many debates going on constantly.

The difficult part is actually working out what to do first. Its one thing to draw on paper, but installing the design requires alot of planning.What's great is that everybody helps each other, we spent the rest of the afternoon helping stand 4 who are building a Wetland Garden.

We really need all our soil before we can go any further, hopefully that will be finished on Monday. Our hard landscaping materials will only arrive next week. We have taken the weekend off and start early on Monday.

DAY 3

We began implementing our showgardens on Tuesday at Lifestyle College in Johannesburg. There are 5 teams, we all have two gardens to complete. The first thing we all had to do
was level our sites. This proved quite a task, shovelling compost on and off trailers, fortunately today Lifestyle hired a lifter to load the soil onto the trailers, so we just had to do the offloading. We have been at it for two days now and have filled 3 and a half sites. Its been hard work and great fun, we basically have all been helping each other as no one can do anything until the sites are level.

I am in a wonderful team with Hennie, Brenda and Tracy (who is 8 months pregnant with Ethan)Tracy is our organiser and makes sure all the lines are straight!

So we have until the 9th of February to complete two gardens. Wish us luck!

I am uploading pictures of getting started.