Gardening – Paradise found

By Andrew Steens

Some years ago I decided to have all my ornamental gardens set up in raised beds, mainly to improve drainage over winter, as our peat soils get so wet, but also to make gardening a bit easier in the expectation that in the not too distant future my knees and back are going to give me some grief. They aren’t very high beds – I’ve just used 150mm x 50mm timber as the edge. To save cost, most of the beds were set up using old deck bearers from decking that needed replacing.

I’ve designed most of the ornamental beds to be no more than two metres wide, or three to four metres wide if I can access it from both sides; again, this is to make working in the beds easier and this width is enough to grow larger and lower maintenance shrubs and trees at the back of the bed, with smaller and more labour intensive plants at the front. The beds are mulched in autumn and spring with wood chips from trees and shrubs that have been pruned or cut down. This makes a fertile, loamy, moist layer that keeps the weeding to a minimum and feeds the plants as it breaks down.

A new technique I’ve worked out has made my life a lot easier. Each bed is edged with Mondo grass (other edging plants can be used too), which stops the birds spreading the garden mulch and soil onto the paths. Mondo grass is notorious for taking over and is difficult to weed out once it does, so I’ve dug in a plastic strip a few centimetres inside the edging, with the Mondo grass planted between the strip and the timber edge. This technique stops the Mondo sending its runners out into the garden. The strip is polythene damp proof course from a hardware store that is just rolled out and cut to length. This is a tough and low cost product that builders use between foundations and walls to prevent rising damp.

Another benefit from the Mondo is that its downward curving foliage nicely hides almost all of the timber edge. I’m taking advantage of this benefit with another modification that I started last year. The timber edges are being capped with a line of black polythene irrigation pipe, nicely hidden by the Mondo, so only the micro-sprinkler heads are visible. Now instead of lugging hoses and sprinklers around the property over summer, I just need to flick the bore pump on, turn a few taps and my gardens are irrigated.

It’s been a lot of work setting these beds up, but now they’re done I can sit back and relax in a tropical-style garden with hardly any weeds, birds that happily scratch away for worms without covering the paths in mulch, easy access to plants that need some attention and lush growing conditions year round – Paradise!