Jungle Taming Days 2 & 3: Main Path & Swing Seat Areas

I'm on a mission to get my neglected garden back under control by the end of the month!

Running down one side of my garden is a main pathway that acts as thoroughfare from the house to the back paddock and chicken run. On one side is my garden sink, the grapevine and compost bins, and on the other the ends of my berry patches, a narrow bed of feijoas and flowers, and finally by the back gate a raised area where my swing seat is under a trellis. Like the rest of my wanna-be jungle, these have been getting very overgrown! Here are three "before" pics:

Phew! Where to start? Well, I started by cutting down about 4 metres of grapevine which had grown along the side of the building, smothering my sink area (not pictured) and trying to get in through a bedroom window. I pulled out weeds, got rid of junk, and cleaned out the sink. I also cleared off a table which was covered in old pots and other junk. And then I started on the pathway area. There was a ton of weeds in a spot to the left just before the grapevine - after clearing that out I laid cardboard and mulched with bark, then put down a pallet and stacked trellis, timber and other garden construction materials there out of the way. I trimmed back the grapevine so the compost bins could be more readily accessed, and it wasn't in danger of entangling me by my hair every time I walked around the far end to my greenhouse! And I pulled weeds all along the pathway, and in the narrow bed of feijoas, leaving one self-seeded cosmos that's well into flowering and looks pretty.

I built a fourth compost bin at the end of the line of bins, ready to be filled shortly. The woven weed mat stapled to the inside of the pallets stops materials falling through the gaps. The pallets are simply wired or nailed together in the corners.

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Then I started on the swing seat area, ripping down all the spent sweet pea vines (saving some seed pods in a container), tearing up the horrid couch grass and all it's runners, weeding out the Chilean Guava bed, and the beds around three sides of the swing seat area. I laid newspaper as weed suppressor around the Impatiens in the rear bed, and covered with aged wood chip. I laid cardboard on the ground under the swing seat and covered with fresh wood chip.

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The Chilean Guavas (aka NZ Cranberry) bushes are just over a year old, and were laden with yummy ripe fruit, which I picked and am using to make jelly. They are delicious and incredibly fragrant! The kids love them.

I made a quick trip to the beach for a few pieces of driftwood - I used a piece, along with two pots, to create a higher edge for this bed, to which I added some homemade compost. One pot has alyssum in it, the other will be planted with petunias. I have male and female kiwifruit vines I will plant on the trellis as soon as they harden off.

And I used some more pieces of driftwood to make a more defined edge to the bed beside the path - since I barked the path, visitors often mistakenly walk on the bed. I have some violas I'm going to plant in this bed for winter, after I do some fine weeding, and add some compost and aged bark, but that's a job for another day.

A couple of things I have since added to this area:

Two low-profile tyres at the end of the compost bins, planted with wormwood. The wormwood will get trimmed periodically and the leaves sprinkled around the hen house and in their nests to repel mites.

Being located close to the back gate will make them handy to pick and take to the chook house.

My new worm farm - made from an old bath mounted on a stand my husband put together for me. I'll be adding an insert inside before filling with manure and adding worms (more on this in another post). A bin under the drain hole will catch the worm tea for use in my garden. Yay! :-)