It’s only been a year

We moved in a year ago this long weekend, and have finally gotten around to putting some plants in the front yard.  My husband told me that if I weeded the front yard I could get some plants to go in it!

We have a deck sitting on top of two layers of kapunda bluestone. What I need is an idea of what to plant in the spaces between the rocks.

I hope you get what I mean from the pictures!

The original plan

 
A view across the front - looking from the driveway to the neighbours

 

From right to left we have - Hardenbergia violacea in white

Oleria (something, we couldn't get the ramalosa but thought this looked closest to it)

Then a big empty space for some Dianella 'Little Jess' when we can find it.
Then some 'brown-eyes' as my husband delighted in calling them. Leacophyta brownii


Then some more Hardenbergia violacea "Happy Wanderer" in purple.


So here are the spaces in between the rocks looking along the deck


Then there are these spaces around the steps that lead up from the driveway to the deck and the front porch.



We are still keen to plant the Pyrus Calleryana either side of the deck with the Dianella Tassie Red's under them.
So I guess I am looking for a native plant that likes full sun that will fill the spaces and hide the bottom of the deck but not hide the rocks.

Thanks

Paving the Tank area.

My husbands ‘test’ paving spot, to ‘see if he can do it’ is the spot where we are going to put the tanks.  We are using extra thick paving the ones you normally use for driveways as we figure the tanks with the water in them will be very heavy.

For such a small area it is alot of sand and pavers to move!

 

All done, just have to wait for the neighbours to build there retaining wall.

The backyard and dead side ‘before’

I wanted to take some in progress / before pictures.

The wood sleepers are our back boundary, when they sell the land behind us I want those owners to have the option of being able to build right up to the fence line, so we didn’t want to put anything to solid in place.  This is the place where the rainwater tanks are going.

The buckets are very useful for moving sand and gravel.

This is down the dead side, past the laundry door, my husband did a wet system for the stormwater, we intend to have it plumbed into the house so that the whole house can run of rainwater.  You can see the corner of the neighbours pool being built.

Standing in the neighbours yard looking along the back of ours.  We have a stormwater easement running across the back of our property.  We would have liked to dig it totally out like our neighbours did except we have an inspection point in the middle so we couldn’t .

Before the neighbours built there retaining wall we put a bit of pipe in for the plumber to run the hose from the rainwater tank down to the house.

This all needs to be paved! Looking from one end and then the other.

Yep those two grey walls are a bit daunting.

My hubby is so impressed with all the gravel we have to move!  The parents loaned us there car and trailer.

All Decked Out

I realised I hadn't put finished photos up.

Excuse the wonky Christmas bows, it has been gail force winds the last few days, as evidenced by the neighbours fallen letterbox.

The wood is Swan river red gum.  The rocks are Kapunda Bluestone.







Goes well with the western red cedar shutters













I love these steps up to the front porch. The landscaping guy did such an amazing job placing them, we sit on them in the evening and have a quite beer after putting the kids to bed.

Smooth Panel Finish Garage Door

Some-one on the homeone forum wanted a picture of a smooth panel roller garage door.  So here is ours

We had to sign a disclaimer stating that we understood the risks of a smooth panel door that it might show up stippling and oil canning.  But it has been fine. You can click on the small pics for bigger closeups.  The colour is Manor Red and the bricks are Sorbetto.

Kitchen Blind and Key Corkboard

After a bit of shopping around I discovered that no-one wanted to make my kitchen roman blind for me.  The material that I had chosen was too heavy and no curtain makers wanted to take the chance.  So I made it by hand myself. It was so big I had to do it on the floor of the computer room, my knees where shot for days.

But I think it looks great in!  We also had down lights put in above the kitchen sink as we couldn’t see when doing the dishes at night.

I also found this corkboard / picture frame at Spotlight, so I removed the cork and put a piece of leftover fabric over it, and some ribbons so I could put notes in there as well as push pins.  I bought some hooks from Bunnings and screwed them onto the frame just under the kids pictures.  I figure when the kids are older they can hang there car keys under there picture!

I hung it next to the kitchen door heading to the garage.

I used the drunk octopus hooks, because they just make me smile every time I see them

With the last of the material I made some door snakes, with little button eyes.

From the outside I now have all red, to match the red front door, red garage door and red laundry door round the other side.

I just realised I haven't put up a photo of the dining area curtain.  We put this up in July.