Our garden renovation - Part 1

We bought our house 10 years ago and in between renovating the interior, we've been trying to make the back garden a bit more livable and user friendly. 

From the start the garden has suffered many transformations as we get more plants or change our minds about the look we want...with the last additions being a covered patio and a deck about 2 years ago, making our backyard a much nicer and more enjoyable place to be.

                                        I'll start with the AFTER photo....

1 -Part of the renovated back garden

Before  (same view)

2 - Original garden - part of the low brick wall already removed in this photo

                                                        HOW IT ALL STARTED:

From the above photo (2) you can see how awful the original backyard looked - large cement pavers, a low brick wall, red cement patio and the huge rotating clothes line. 

The only green in the garden was from a lemon/mandarin tree at the far left end, a callistemon (bottle brush tree) next to it, a plum tree in the middle, whose fruit would fall to the ground at the slightest whiff of wind (right corner of photo), and a Meyer lemon tree on the far right of the garden. 

There was a low brick wall dividing the cement area from the rest of the garden with a tiny gate on one side, even encircling the clothesline. Crazy!

3 - the low brick wall divided the garden in two - cement patio on one side, cement bricks on the other

4 - the uninviting back area

As you can imagine all the red cement, more brick and cement pavers did nothing to liven up the dark brick house either. Here part of the brick wall had already been demolished.

1) - A few pavers were removed close to the fence and plants added. At some stage the clothes drier fell as it was rusted. The rectangular area where it stood is covered in cement, and I just added a layer of soil and planted some short rooted plants. Then I painted the red cemented patio in a beige/yellowish cement paint and the area started looking slightly better

                                                      6 - pavers removed, first plants go in

                                                    7 - Some plant growth can be seen

2) - As you can see comparing the photo above and below (7 & 8), the small area where the clothes dryer was underwent another remodel - soil and plants removed and I added pebbles and planted the succulents in vases on top of the pebbles.

8 - View from the kitchen window - the plants were growing well, side fence covered with reed mat

3) The plants grew quite well as you can see...On the side you can see a mirror that came from our bathroom renovation. The slightly rusted wheelbarrow was brought home from a verge collection...(I now have two of them). I painted it in a light green colour, added soil and more succulents. 

The what was a tiny grape vine when we bought the house, had kept growing over the wires that my husband added to some metal poles that were cemented in.

The back of the house was still very uninviting, but the garden area was looking better. We also planted a passion fruit vine on the left side of the house.

10 - Passion fruit vine on the side of the house

3) - During one of the hot Perth summers we decided the pavers were just heating up the garden and the house, so part of the pavers were removed and some grass added.

11 - some grass was added to the back garden for freshness

4) - At some stage we bought a cheap gazebo at Big W and set it up by the back fence on top of brick pavers that a friend gave us after he finished building his house. 

A banana tree was planted (next to the gazebo), but even though it's now huge we haven't had many bananas... The back fence was planted with a creeper that grew and grew and took over everything....it was later removed!

12- The gazebo was set up next to back fence

The garden suite was left here when we bought the house, and we originally used it indoors. It was covered in some hideous beige flowery fabric and I recovered the cushions in a off-white thick fabric.  Of course, just with as many things in my house, the colour scheme has changed and I later covered the settees in orange fabric.

13 - For a while the shade sail was useful to shelter us from the sun when eating outdoors

14 -The former clothes drier is now used as a cover over the vegetable garden on the right side of the back garden

15 - More vases and plants were added to this area

16 - Seen from the back towards the house

I love succulents and I keep on adding to the collection by reproducing some of my plants.

Hope you enjoyed part 1 of my garden renovation, next installment to follow next week.

Have a lovely rest of the week and enjoy the weekend.

On the weekend I'll be busy helping my husband clean the garage so we can throw some stuff out for the verge collection starting next week ... and then I can start planning what to pack for the holidays, print out the many lists of things to do and see..... we're off in less than 2 weeks!