My side front back garden (our house is back to front) has a bed that needs TLC or rather that needs to be completely replanted because its full of weeds!
Well it always has been ever since the conifers were taken out and become part of the driveway but I had some inspiration from Prince Charles' thyme walk and have decided to turn this bed of red gravel rocks into a thyme walk/drive as well.
So at first I thought maybe I can just weedmat it and plant in holes and I even bought some weedmat (ugly black stuff that supermarket bags are made out of) and pinned it to the ground with rivets. But then I realised that wouldn't really work and weedmat is so ugly, and then you have to put soil or mulch ON TOP and where would I get that from? So I am doing the old-fashioned route and weeding out each horrible weed by hand (and trowel). And underneath all those weeds and rocks is black plastic anyway which I can just pull up.
I have so far planted four emerald carpet thymes which I hope WILL spread to make a lovely green carpet, one native pratia and one native seriella. The natives are meant to do well if the thymes don't take but as they are in full sun for most of the day in poor soil I'm hoping they will take like a duck to water. (Or duckweed). The pratias and seriellas are groundcovers meant for no-mow lawns, forming dense mats, and even have nice white flowers, one is even called 'snow in summer'. Seriella is touted as wonderful and salt resistant, so if you need to get rid of weeds just sprinkle salt around and all the surrounding weeds will die except for the seriella. However I might hold off for now because I don't want to kill the thymes as well.
The weeds infesting this part of the garden include plaintain, dandelion, oxalis, clover (which I may just leave, it's pretty) and some other unidentifiables that routinely get squashed by my car tyres.
So here's hoping this experiment will work and I will have a nice fragrant lawn which never needs mowing just steamrolling (or rubberrolling) every now and again by my car. I hope to find some roman chamomile for the sunnier patch as heard that does well too. Unfortunately its not that cheap to buy these herbs that sell at Kings for $3.49 a pot and groundcovers are $9.99 so I will just need to do as my budget allows (which means, find some more paid work!) and I have a lot of ground to cover so as well as praying for it not to rain for my garden party I also have to pray that whatever I plant will thrive and spread quickly so people won't exclaim over my patchy no-mow lawn and say - you missed a spot. Mum was very suspicious that I put weedmat down and quickly reminded me that the rivets and nails I banged in place will probably puncture my car tyres.
I haven't told her those sharp mother-in-law tongues sell for $20 at the Warehouse but then I think she already knows. She already knows everything. That's the annoying thing.
