This was the view of the front of our house when we first looked at it just over 12 months ago.

It was relatively unremarkable but we were not keen on the wide expanse of dusty blue metal.

We have been working on how to change it but still enable access to the driveway at the far side of the house.

Most of the plants have been removed and/or relocated as most of them were in the far front corner which has been repurposed into a vehicle parking/turning area. GMan also removed all of the metal edging from that area but since it was one continuous length we have reused it to border the new garden area.

This is a photo from an earlier blog post.

The first of the plants have been in for some time now. We had a load of mulch delivered a couple of days ago so have been busy covering the ground with layers of excess newspaper sourced from the local newsagent and then covered with a generous layer of mulch. The product we chose is called ‘bush bark’ and provides the most natural-looking cover for this area of the garden.

There are not many weeds to suppress in this area but the addition of a thick layer of mulch should help to moderate the soil temperature, particularly on extremely hot days like tomorrow with a forecast maximum temperature of 37C.

The two small raised vegetable gardens will eventually be relocated but the zucchini and eggplant are happily growing there at the moment.

We still have a small area left to finish, but not in the heat tomorrow. GMan is also creating a wire barrier to isolate the stormwater drain from the mulch during heavy rain.

We are looking forward to adding some more plants to this area to provide habitat for the local birds and wildlife.