More greening

While I wait for my hypnotherapy exam to print out (I have the final interview tomorrow), I thought I'd blog about my garden again.

This is now the fourth straight weekend that I've gone out and bought native plants. Besides the ones I got from the council, I went the following weekend to a closing down sale at Olsen's in Ranui and got some great deals, including several more pigeon-attracting plants. This is going to be Pigeon Paradise.

I went back there today and got 20 more rengarenga lilies (since they seem to thrive here) and a dozen more cabbage trees (ditto, and they fit in between other plants), plus a nice little rosemary and a groundcover. The lilies and the cabbage trees were half-price, a dollar each. I also went to the native plant place in West Coast Rd where I got the Council plants and picked up a couple of climbers and a pukanui, and lucked into a lovely little nikau palm for $1 at a church fair I happened to pass.

Last week I went to Gordon's on Scenic Drive for pratias to (hopefully) spread across the bank, and more ferns for the fernery. It's starting to look much more filled in. Mum has some little hen-and-chicken ferns for me as well, so I've left some room for them - they grow quite densely.

By the end of today I'll have planted well over 100 plants in the course of a month, or about one per square meter of garden.

Next week, I think, it's time to plant bulbs down near the road, where we and passers-by can both enjoy them in the spring.

Greening

I spent an exhausting but satisfying day yesterday planting about 35 plants that I got through the Waitakere City Council. They'll give you plants just for the asking if you're restoring an area of bush, and I wanted to thicken up the bush down the side of our place. Most of them turn into trees eventually.

Much as I'd like to say that I don't take any crap from my mother, it's not true. She gave me a sack of goat manure to use in planting the trees. Hopefully it will bring them away like the young rainforest she has in her front yard, which was a barren piece of lawn five years ago.

Of the nine kinds of plants I planted, five of them attract native pigeons and/or tuis, so we, the birds and everyone nearby will hopefully be benefiting from my hard work for years to come.

Below: I've unloaded the trees and assembled my tools (and the big sack of manure). In the background you can see some of the existing trees, including the puriri I planted last year partially visible on the extreme right of the photo. The trees are, approximately from front to back: kahikatea; coprosma/kanono; hangehange; puka (Griselinia lucida, not the large-leaved puka which is a different species entirely); pigeonwood; lacebark; kawakawa; whiteywood; and titoki.