Digital Re-Design for a Heritage Garden

This photograph from yesterday's posting has attracted quite a lot of interest and generated discussion on a number of issues so here it is again. 

The first thing to point out is that this photo of The Old Cottage Garden at "The Drip" has been tinkered with. The gate that appears in the original version of the photo has been digitally airbrushed out.  Similarly the gravel on the realigned path is "digital gravel".  And the white seat at the end of the path is of course just a quick computer-generated sketch designed to establish a scale for the real thing. Ditto  the two circles representing balls of clipped Teucrium fruticans.  This technique is something we are using more and more.  Taking a photo from the most significant viewing position, in this case from the doors to the library, then tinkering around with a few quick ideas sketched in digitally is helping us save a lot of time and money by getting a clear idea of what things will look like before we commit real resources to achieving it.

To achieve these modifications took less than five minutes and these days it really requires no great skill in graphics technology to do simple operations such as this.  Software such as Photoshop or Paint has made what was once the preserve of highly trained graphics professionals accessible to all and the software is rapidly becoming even more powerful and more user friendly.  Who would have ever thought that an old time Australian cottage garden would be re-designed with high technology one hundred and fifty years after the first settlers here battled to establish a foothold in this harsh environment?  How times change.

Redesigning the Old Cottage Garden

The Old Cottage Garden was first laid out in the late nineteenth century. It followed the fashion of the day with a straight, narrow path leading from the little front door to the narrow front gate, all edged with quartz from the goldfields.  Not any more.  

We decided to realign the path.  It had never run at a right angle to the house and it looked, well, it just looked really silly.  And annoying.  And anyway this is now the back of the new house.  So we shifted the path to this new position, orthogonal to the house.  In the photograph above you can still see the line of the old path leading to the old front gate.  No-one has ever used the 'front gate' anyway, so next  week we will block it in and place a seat at the end of the new path to give a satisfying focal point. New gravel on the path and a pair of clipped  silvery Teucrium fruticans  will complete the reworking as shown in the image below.

An added advantage with the new design, so we have been told, is that the feng shui of the house is now much more propitious; health and prosperity will no longer be able to flow from the house but will be contained within.  Sounds good to us.  To see Rick Martin's panoramic photograph of The Old Cottage Garden in the Autumn of 2010 click here

A Walk into "The Drip"

A visit from Matt and Shannida Herbert was the perfect excuse to take a break from pruning, weeding, planting and all those winter jobs that fill the days at this time of year.

Matt and Shannida are the directors of  locally based company Aquaponics Pty. Ltd and have a wealth of knowledge not only about aquaponics but also solar power systems, natural sequencing, water management and many, many other things ecological, environmental, sustainable and generally sensible. 

It is always great to connect with like-minded people and explore ideas on how best to manage the land into the twenty-first century.  This was their first time here, so a walk up into The Drip was essential.  For more on "The Walk to The Drip"  click here

What's Blooming this Week?

The Gungurru, Eucalyptus caesia "Silver Princess",  is a Western Australian mallee that thrives in the Mudgee climate.

Our grove of these has been in flower right through winter, much to the delight of the honeyeaters.

The mallees, small multi-trunked trees, are some of the most spectacular of the flowering "gumtrees". Given the success of this species we are now planning to expand and diversify our collection.  A new page on our website will list species that we believe worth trying.  To see The Mallee Grove page click here

Winter Pruning for Structure

 

With the last  weeks of winter upon us and spring about to arrive the pressure is now on to finish the pruning of deciduous trees.

These grafted Scottish "Wych" Elms, Ulmus glabra var horizontalis, in The Forecourt, will eventually  provide shady "umbrellas" for car parking during the heat of summer.  But even with these expensive grafted varieties it is still necessary to prune in order to achieve the desired outcome.

Structural pruning such as this is an ongoing maintainance task which needs annual attention.  The careful shaping of trees and shrubs to achieve structure and form is fundamental to our design approach in all the gardens surrounding the house.  For more about The House Gardens click here.

Daffodils, Daffodils and more Daffodils.

The "Ptolemy"  daffodil is an old heirloom variety, bred by Barr & Sons  prior to 1920.

We don't have a lot of these yet but they are multiplying nicely and will be divided this season.

Each day now another variety of daffodil is coming into bloom in The Old Orchard.  We have around forty varieties so there's a lot still to come.  To see more about daffodils in The Old Orchard click here

Bush Lemons Ripen in Midwinter

This ancient "bush lemon" provides a ridiculous amount of fruit each winter.

It was planted here in the late nineteenth century along with many other citrus trees and is still fruiting

The bush lemon, part of The Old Orchard,  is not as acidic as other lemons and makes a delicious cordial or fresh vitamin C drink.  To see more about citrus varieties planted at The Drip click here.