This week's question on Hive Garden is about 'seed'. Thing is, I'm terrible at raising plants from seed, unless they are super robust ones like calendula, nastursium or borage, and they pretty much plant themselves. I'm meant to have brassicas all ready to go for the cooler weather that's coming but something keeps eating them. And most of my seedlings aren't growing past that first set of leaves, and are all leggy and pathetic. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but perhaps I should pull my finger out (gross expression) and figure it out.

So, instead of imparting wisdoms or boasts about seeds, I'm going to get a bit more symbolic and show you the progress we've made on the rest of the garden. It's the beginning of something, really, and there's many plants to buy and nurture and figure out where they all go. But we feel this week we've got some solid infrastructure going on.

The angle above is probably the best way to explain it. See the gate? That's where the raised beds are - many of you would have seen this already. It's still quite hot so a late planting of bush beans is struggling a little - I have to get some shade cloth up.

However, everything south of the gate - we're in Australia, so to be north facing is best for all year sun - is the larget garden. You can see the raised beds with netting to the right, just near the deck. They're the remnants of my makeshift summer patch, and they'll have garlic in soon as the zucchini and tomatoes are done. I've had great tomatoes this year as the heat in that garden is just amazing, and it's so sheltered. In that area, I've added lots of coffee grounds, chook manure, straw and seaweed and compost to revitalise the soil. IT's pretty much sandy so it needs a lot of work.

Just below that is the middle garden which I've divided into two - three if you count the existing apple trees along the fence. The curved bit has a dwarf washington navel we planted, and revitalised soil for more edible plants (now that the chooks have more room with their tunnel, they're not allowed in the proper garden) and the rest of it is mulched with cardboard and native mulch we got from the arborists trimming a large gum in the front garden. This will be a more mediterranean style/native waterwise garden.

The view above is from the deck - it's fun designing a garden with this view! The paths will have some kind of topping, and in front of the shed too for Jamie to work on his projects. Then it'll step down into more garden and a deck coming off the shed, as that'll be shaded for summer and have a cover against the rain. We probably won't get that done til spring though the 'seed' of the idea has been planted!

In front of the chook pen, we had to put a retaining wall up as the garden is on a slope. However, this is also a good design and it places the chook coop enclosure on a lower level, which starts to mute it in the landscape. I'm going to put a honeysuckle creeper on the front of the cage too. That'll also have aggregate and paving. The rocks are western district volcanic rocks that everyone gives away for free as they dont' really know how how to use them well. I like them because they're local and free. People spend a fortune on rocks - sod that.

This area gets more shade too so it'll have more shade loving plants - what, I'm not sure yet.

This gives a good angle I think as well, showing how the chook house starts to fade. The cherry will definitely hide it too when it grows up. See the chairs right out back there?That's where the chook tunnel runs, taking them to the back of the shed where they can scratch around and have a bath in the sun.

I really don't even mind the neighbours house - a '90's build which was modern at the time. They don't really look over us - that's all their utility on that side, such as laundry and bathroom I think. And they're never home - it's a holiday house, and they're really lovely people. Living in suburbia really isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

I hope you've enjoyed my 'garden progress' report - poor Jamie is so knackered from carrying rocks and mulch he doesn't even want to LOOK at the garden. Me, I'm staring at it from the deck puzzling about plantings - and of course my seeds.

I'm pretty chuffed - though I thought I'd miss the old place, the potential of this is so great I'm putting all my energy into that, instead of the past.

With Love,

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