The back garden of our house in Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains measures about 17.6 x 10 m (45 x 25 ft), with a gentle slope at the back, a steepish bank, then almost flat right at the back of the house.

When we first bought the house in December 1997, there was not much real garden at all. Several large gum trees*, a row of Pittosporum** along the back with a couple of the most cramped and elongated bottlebrushes we'd ever seen struggling for life in between, and a small mess of snapdragon and mauve pelargonium just in front of them. The left-hand side had a diosma, a (very beautiful) dark blue-purple hydrangea, far too many Jerusalem artichokes (which I loathe), more mauve pelargonium, and some old roses*** with a lot of very tatty and snail-ridden succulent-something mixed in. Along the top of the bank in the middle were three enormous out-of-control abelias. Plus assorted weeds everywhere. And large clumps of bamboo, which my husband has mostly dealt with by now. And blackberry, which we are still dealing with ("The price of blackberry is eternal vigilance," he says solemnly ;-) ). Both bamboo and blackberry are noxious weeds here -- they SPREAD.

The right side of the back wasn't too bad, with a couple of azaleas (wish they hadn't decided to put the red one right next to the pink one, sigh, but it does flower a bit later and is mostly behind the pink one) and a Japanese maple, as well as more enormous gums. Also several nice big treeferns at the right side of the house, one of them very badly placed so it blocked access along the side path and darkened one of the living room windows.

About the grass the less said the better, unless you LIKE dandelion, cats-teeth, and other assorted weeds. No bindi-eye, thank heavens! (An Aussie lawn weed with horrid sharp little prickles, making it impossible to walk across the grass barefoot.) Most of the front is still like this, alas, although native violet is spreading well. The back has become somewhat better, though the top area is still full of cats-teeth (thin-stemmed, tall, dandelion-like plants, with multiple flower stems per plant and smaller flowers and leaves). The lawn next to the house is actually rather nice and green and springy these days.

*Gum trees. These are more properly known as Eucalypts, and Australia is covered in 'em. All of us can tell a few species at sight, but there are several hundred different ones (I think), and for most of 'em, well, we know they're gum trees :-)

**Pittosporum are large boofy conical shrubs/small trees (4-5m, 12-18ft) with masses of light-green leaves with white edges. Pleasant enough, but so MANY of them!

*** There is a lovely story about the old roses. My dear mother, who died in 1989, loved roses and had some very beautiful ones. My favourite was Talisman, an old-fashioned open rose with a lovely scent. It starts out cream, then flushes deep magenta as the bud opens. When my mother died I didn't know roses can be grown from cuttings, so I didn't take any when the house was sold. Some years later, with a friend who knew how to grow roses, I made a not-quite-midnight raid on the house, to snip some cuttings over the old picket fence. Alas, the picket fence was no longer there, nor were the roses. The new owner had put in a smart new iron-railing fence, and removed half the front garden -- grass right up to the fence. I cried.

When I first came to this house in Wentworth Falls, I didn't want to live in the mountains, nice as they are. It was too far away from Sydney (100k - 60 miles), and I only moved up because I was in financial difficulties and needed to share expenses with my Stephen. I was miserable, and he was too because I was. But in the spring, when the old roses in the back garden started to flower, I realised they were -- Talisman! Suddenly I felt a great deal better about the house and garden (although it's STILL a long way from everywhere), and we were much happier.

The front garden we could cope with -- we can't see it from our living-room windows. But our study/workroom/studio (ex-sunroom, probably built by the original owner's brother-in-law who assured him he could do a Really Good Job, Dirt-Cheap), looks over the back yard. Clearly, action had to be taken. And when I moved up in mid-1999, we took it.

First to the wall come the revolution:  the three giant abelias. Hyyyy-yaaah! Thud! Crack! Heave! Hmmn, three large craters...   Let's put ponds in them!

Below is a composite shot of what the back yard looked like at this point, with the abelias out and the first lot of ponds set in and the first ferns etc planted. The old roses are still in place, surrounded by a temporary brick edging, and have been weeded. I have filled in the foreground on the left with generic grass, since the original pictures didn't go quite that far down. The pictures aren't very good quality, 'cause I'm using a $6 supermarket camera -- still waiting for 3.1 Mpix digital cameras to come down to a reasonable price :-( . (Sorry. But not very.)

This is what the right-hand side of the garden looked like at this stage:

Here's a shot of the pond area with a few more stones and some new plants and moss in place:

Well, the garden stayed like this for about a year in its general development, though of course I planted LOTS more things. Perennials as much as I could afford, with annuals to fill in the gaps with colour till the perennials spread. By now the centre ponds were well established, but the left-hand side was still pretty uninspired. Here's the central ponds in early spring (October) 2001; all four ponds, the lower pond and flowstone, and the upper three (the small ones nearly hidden):

In case you're wondering, the lilies in the lower pond aren't real -- it was too early for the real ones yet. Those are for the fish to hide and bask under during the winter. The biggest goldfish are about 13-15cm (5-6") now. They were just tiddlers (6cm, 2 1/2") when I bought them.

We had also been working on our front patio, which is a full story off the ground and extends to make a carport. We were given some very nice large pots as wedding presents, and luckily managed to match them with pots on sale at the local K-Mart. Here are three pictures of the patio, looking south-west, south-east at our living room window-boxes, and west down our front drive.

In the late winter-early spring of 2001 I ended up with a month off between jobs, and decided to attack the left-hand side of the back garden. Bit by bit I cleared the weeds out towards the left from the established middle ponds, and began setting rocks in place. At this point let me say with great pride that all our rocks were home-grown on this very property :-) In fact, a not insignificant number of them were unearthed during this clearing process, not to mention the ones my husband found with the mower or dug out when doing the new flower beds.

As well as clearing the weeds, I (finally) enthused my Stephen into digging me a new rose bed by the big gum tree in the middle of the yard on the right. Into this we moved our old roses, discovering to our surprise that what we thought were four roses were only one -- the original rose had layered about 30cm (1 ft) underground. I didn't know they could do that! So we separated them, and moved them to their new home, where they get more sunlight. They're very happy, and have bulked out and flowered profusely. Below is a close-up of some of their flowers, and a general view of the new garden:

At this time also the Great Treefern Moving Enterprise was reaching its conclusion. We had long before decided to move the badly-sited treefern by the side of the house up to the rock garden. Stephen had by now excavated to the rootball of the fern, going down to a depth of about 1m (3 ft). We also discovered where the builders had put nearly every small rock and stone they dug up on the property -- they were holding the treefern down (presumably to stop it taking flight and escaping into the wild blue yonder). Stephen and one of his friends finally got the thing out of the hole and onto a trolley, but the wheels fell off (literally!) half-way up the slope, so they had to carry it to its prepared crater and sort of drop it in. This is why it's at a slight slant now... The treefern was immensely heavy, with lots of dirt and good-sized stones tangled up in its rootball. And spiky! It scratched the poor guys even through their shirts. My advice to those planning to move a treefern is simple: don't.

Below is a (very poor, sorry!) shot of Stephen grubbing round the rootball in the original location, and one of the treefern in the garden in March 2002.

   

We were very worried about the treefern, as one by one the old fronds withered and died. But we watered it heavily, up and down the trunk as well as the crown and around it, and finally the tightly-furled new fiddleheads started to turn green and uncurl. Now (March 2002) most of the new fronds are fully open, with more still uncurling, and the treefern is happy. So are we!

We bought a statue. After looking at a lot of garden statuary, some in remarkably poor taste, we finally bought A Lady With Jugs, as Stephen describes her. A little work with a file by me removed some rough bits, and here she is:

You can see in this picture that we had also laid in the second set of ponds, and planted around them, though the front of the left side of the garden was still very sparse at this time. Here's another shot of what the work in progress looked like; the boofy shrubs at the back are the Pittosporum. The other picture shows more clearly the treefern and how BIG our gumtrees are, plus a mass of forget-me-nots in the foreground:

There are still a few bare areas I'm filling in, and the area at the front of the big new pond is still patchy as plants haven't had time to establish yet. But I'm working on it!

Howling dry winds and the threat of bushfires over Christmas-New Year 2001 haven't exactly helped.

Here's a plan of the back garden so you can see the general layout. Clicking on it will go to a larger image. It isn't quite to scale -- the house should be a little bigger.

Below are general pictures of the garden as of December 2001. This is what I see looking to the left from my study; the location is to the left of the hydrangea and diosma. Beside it is a close-up of the hydrangea and the left edge of the lowest new pond.

Here we look up along the left side of the garden, standing by the potting bench, and a close-up of the lowest new pond:

The next pictures are the middle area between the two sets of ponds, and another general shot of the newer ponds.

Continuing on towards the right, here are the older ponds again, looking from the right back towards the statue:

 

Finally, some pictures from the front -- the rambling rose (Floribunda sp.) which grows over the gumtree by the front steps, and the pale-blue hydrangea with massive flower heads (25-30cm -- 9-12" across) which grows directy below the front patio. We intend to move this hydrangea to the hole left by the treefern, where it will get more shade and be happier.

   

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