Five Years On - The Hump Garden
The Hump Garden is now five years old, and is my largest and most colourful garden area. Garden growth has been so vigorous (with so much open space and sunshine) that paths and plants are shifted around (and sometimes removed) every year.
Me in the Hump Garden
It's a super-sunny garden, so I've dedicated a lot of the space to roses, and filled the gaps between them with perennials and dahlias. These flower on and on for many months.
Evergreen Phormiums and Pittosporums enhance the garden with their beautiful greenery, and swathes of Agapanthus cover the ground lower down. Here I've constructed a retaining wall with wooden log rounds, and I'm slowly filling up the garden with compost and horse manure.
NZ Gardener Roses
Ornamental grasses like Miscanthus have (in theory) enough room to spread out, and there are several ornamental trees - Maples, a flowering Cherry, and a pretty Cercis.
The Hump Garden is my go-to sunny garden for any of my own struggling plants. Recycled plants from other people's gardens also find (hopefully) their forever home here. Recent arrivals include yet more roses, some bright pink clumps of Phlox, and a white flowering Buddleia.
Lots of self-seeders...
Self-seeder shrubs (like Pittosporums, green Cordylines, and shimmering Anemanthele grasses) are indulged until they get far too big, or block an important access path. Annual flower seeders are a beautiful menace - particularly Campion and Lychnis - and I have major scraping sessions to clear out the excess.
Every year loads of horse manure and home-made compost add to the existing weed colonies. Ooops. So there's no lack of vegetation, and my biggest jobs are to keep the paths clear and mulched, and rationalise all the extraordinary growth.
In the early days I was charmed by self-sown Prunus and Gleditsia trees. Not any more. I sawed them all down a couple of years ago. With branches sticking out at all angles, and covered in nasty spikes, they were pretty unpleasant to garden around.
Hump Garden Mess
But soon...
This coming winter a little more of the Hump area will be available for garden development. Three large original shelter trees (two pine trees and a huge Eucalyptus) are to be felled for firewood. Yippee! Even more sun! More room for even more roses! And so on, and so on...