We've welcomed a new addition to the garden, or more precisely the footpath.
We planted out gardens on the footpath going back a while now in an effort to hide the bottom of an unsightly fence. Our fence due to the slope of the land had gaps underneath the panels on the bottom right side, gaps big enough a chook could fit under, or a smallish dog, so we put scraps of building material under them to stop these gaps being used as a unwanted shortcut by either. This does the job, but doesn't look the best from the outside footpath, so a garden was built along the fence line to eventually, once the plants grow, hide it. This garden incorporates mostly things which I could get for free or for very little at the time, including some pineapples (I love the way these have quite an architectural look about them when they get bigger) and different types of grasses.
At the same time, a garden bed was established around some largish eucalypts and a she-oak growing on the footpath which I wanted to keep but were killing off the grass around their bases and looking very untidy. At the time our neighbours were selling their home and we wanted it to look as nice as possible for their auction day. It seemed fate when we were able to get a pile of free woodchip bark from a friend of a friends felled tree and met with our desire at the time to get a little bit of a native garden going to help attract small native birds to our garden. So with all the right ingredients in place at once our first little native garden got started.
However I digress...With our regularly now going out to check on how these plants are going and do some watering, parts of the lawn out there are starting to look really inviting. However our brutal summer sun has really dried out the high side which has no shade throughout the day. We'd been thinking about planting out some other natives to created a bit of a shade area here (and I also have been secretly plotting for hubby to build a bench seat out here for passersby to sit, rest, enjoy the view through the trees to the water and/or have a chat). However the decision came about just through chatting as we do about what other plants we'd like to have and where we might fit them in our ever decreasing backyard space.
Olives.
We've always both wanted olive trees, but as we didn't know much about them and hadn't yet in our heads been able to envision the perfect spot, we'd held off. Now I've never been shy about putting plants on the footpath, (there was a couple of summers ago when my entire footpath to the roadway was covered in sprawling pumpkin vines), but I didn't want to put plants out here where all my love and devotion resulted in fruits that would end up being picked prematurely by passersby. (Yes, we did loose some pumpkins). We figured olives would only be inviting to those that really know what to do to make them edible, and we wouldn't mind so much in sharing under those circumstances.
Now I had been looking around at olive trees at the nursery and at Bunnings, and had done some limited research on the type of trees I wanted. The plan was to go with Manzilla's originally, but googling to find less expensive options brought the Helena Olive to our attention (not to be confused with the St Helena Olive which is now extinct).
This is the blurb from inside the swing card attached to these olive trees: " St Helena Island is a heritage National Park off the coast of Brisbane, Australia. It was a high security prison from 1867 to the 1920's and then a prison farm until its closure in 1932.
The original olive tree was planted in the late 1800's after being brought to the island from Europe by a visiting magistrate. Your are purchasing a 3rd generation heritage tree which has a history of producing exceptional fruit and award winning olive oil."
Apparently the prison was to be self sufficient and produced not only all their own food, but had an olive grove which sold award winning olive oil back to Italy.
Once again it just seemed meant to be. Here was a type of olive tree that had been proven on an island off of Brisbane. Perfect, a sun loving, drought tolerant, and island suitable tree. And just like that, two new trees have found a home with us.
From other researching I've done, it would seem we've got a long wait ahead of us before seeing our first olives, about seven years, but I'm sure it will be worth it.
We planted out gardens on the footpath going back a while now in an effort to hide the bottom of an unsightly fence. Our fence due to the slope of the land had gaps underneath the panels on the bottom right side, gaps big enough a chook could fit under, or a smallish dog, so we put scraps of building material under them to stop these gaps being used as a unwanted shortcut by either. This does the job, but doesn't look the best from the outside footpath, so a garden was built along the fence line to eventually, once the plants grow, hide it. This garden incorporates mostly things which I could get for free or for very little at the time, including some pineapples (I love the way these have quite an architectural look about them when they get bigger) and different types of grasses.
At the same time, a garden bed was established around some largish eucalypts and a she-oak growing on the footpath which I wanted to keep but were killing off the grass around their bases and looking very untidy. At the time our neighbours were selling their home and we wanted it to look as nice as possible for their auction day. It seemed fate when we were able to get a pile of free woodchip bark from a friend of a friends felled tree and met with our desire at the time to get a little bit of a native garden going to help attract small native birds to our garden. So with all the right ingredients in place at once our first little native garden got started.
 |
| Our little native garden. The plants don't look much yet but in time they'll grow. |
However I digress...With our regularly now going out to check on how these plants are going and do some watering, parts of the lawn out there are starting to look really inviting. However our brutal summer sun has really dried out the high side which has no shade throughout the day. We'd been thinking about planting out some other natives to created a bit of a shade area here (and I also have been secretly plotting for hubby to build a bench seat out here for passersby to sit, rest, enjoy the view through the trees to the water and/or have a chat). However the decision came about just through chatting as we do about what other plants we'd like to have and where we might fit them in our ever decreasing backyard space.
Olives.
We've always both wanted olive trees, but as we didn't know much about them and hadn't yet in our heads been able to envision the perfect spot, we'd held off. Now I've never been shy about putting plants on the footpath, (there was a couple of summers ago when my entire footpath to the roadway was covered in sprawling pumpkin vines), but I didn't want to put plants out here where all my love and devotion resulted in fruits that would end up being picked prematurely by passersby. (Yes, we did loose some pumpkins). We figured olives would only be inviting to those that really know what to do to make them edible, and we wouldn't mind so much in sharing under those circumstances.
Now I had been looking around at olive trees at the nursery and at Bunnings, and had done some limited research on the type of trees I wanted. The plan was to go with Manzilla's originally, but googling to find less expensive options brought the Helena Olive to our attention (not to be confused with the St Helena Olive which is now extinct).
This is the blurb from inside the swing card attached to these olive trees: " St Helena Island is a heritage National Park off the coast of Brisbane, Australia. It was a high security prison from 1867 to the 1920's and then a prison farm until its closure in 1932.
The original olive tree was planted in the late 1800's after being brought to the island from Europe by a visiting magistrate. Your are purchasing a 3rd generation heritage tree which has a history of producing exceptional fruit and award winning olive oil."
Apparently the prison was to be self sufficient and produced not only all their own food, but had an olive grove which sold award winning olive oil back to Italy.
Once again it just seemed meant to be. Here was a type of olive tree that had been proven on an island off of Brisbane. Perfect, a sun loving, drought tolerant, and island suitable tree. And just like that, two new trees have found a home with us.
From other researching I've done, it would seem we've got a long wait ahead of us before seeing our first olives, about seven years, but I'm sure it will be worth it.
 |
| One of our new Helena Olives. |
No comments:
Post a Comment