At the side of our house is a 2.5 meter wide paved area that has been there ever since the house was built in 1994. The paving consists of pale grey concrete slabs with cracked cement between. I'm not a big fan of paving, especially not ugly paving, so it was time to dig up these stained and uneven old slabs and create a new flower bed to house my fynbos plants.
The concrete paving was surprisingly easy to get rid of. All you need is a hammer, chisel and shovel. First chip away the cement between pavers using the hamer and chisel and then lift out the slab by levering a shovel into the gap. This is a very easy way to remove a slab without damaging the surrounding paving. After that you can simply pop up the remaining slabs one by one with the shovel.
I dug over the entire bed, removing rocks, roots from the neigbor's tree and random junk that the original builders left on-site and simply paved over. Then came my favorite gardening activity - planting! I decided to use the newly created bed only for indigenous plants, preferably fynbos. I also added a False Olive Tree (Buddleja saligna). There are some power lines visible on the other side of our fence, so the tree was positioned in such a way that it will block those lines when viewed from our front door and living room window. Buddleja saligna is supposed to grow at the rate of 1 meter per year, so this should happen within the next 3 years or so.
Several of the plants I planted out were grown from cuttings. The rest were purchased from the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens in Betty's Bay. They have a fantastic range of fynbos plants and prices are a lot lower at Harold Porter than at Kirstenbosch. I didn't photograph all of the plants, but the ones in this photo are:
The plants are so small as to be practially invisible on the photos, but after a year or two it should look a lot better. I will post some "after" photos once they are established and there is more to see.
The concrete paving was surprisingly easy to get rid of. All you need is a hammer, chisel and shovel. First chip away the cement between pavers using the hamer and chisel and then lift out the slab by levering a shovel into the gap. This is a very easy way to remove a slab without damaging the surrounding paving. After that you can simply pop up the remaining slabs one by one with the shovel.
I dug over the entire bed, removing rocks, roots from the neigbor's tree and random junk that the original builders left on-site and simply paved over. Then came my favorite gardening activity - planting! I decided to use the newly created bed only for indigenous plants, preferably fynbos. I also added a False Olive Tree (Buddleja saligna). There are some power lines visible on the other side of our fence, so the tree was positioned in such a way that it will block those lines when viewed from our front door and living room window. Buddleja saligna is supposed to grow at the rate of 1 meter per year, so this should happen within the next 3 years or so.
Several of the plants I planted out were grown from cuttings. The rest were purchased from the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens in Betty's Bay. They have a fantastic range of fynbos plants and prices are a lot lower at Harold Porter than at Kirstenbosch. I didn't photograph all of the plants, but the ones in this photo are:
- Athanasia crithmifolia
- Cliffortia ferruginea
- Euryops abrotanifolius
- Euryops thunbergii? (Not too sure about this one - this was a cutting from the wild)
- Felicia filifolia
- Helichrysum argyrophyllum
- Hermannia pinnata
- Hymenolepis parviflora
- Leonotis leonorus (replaced at the last minute with the Buddleja saligna tree)
- Osteospermum fruticosum
- Pelargonium cucullatum
The plants are so small as to be practially invisible on the photos, but after a year or two it should look a lot better. I will post some "after" photos once they are established and there is more to see.