This is taking much longer than I anticipated, because nap times are not included. Who knew designing was so exhausting. This may be why there are no beds in design studios.
Also, designers can't go out and garden in their design studios either so they don't have that distraction of plants that need to be planted straight away or they will die. Yesterday at the floral circle got two plants from the trading table - one Mexican Bush sage and another Japanese anemone. So my garden is going international with plants from all over the world. These plants needed to go in and some other plants needed to come out and these needed to be put somewhere as well so by the time I got back inside ready with the felt tips and butter paper its was 9pm.
And still no photos I don't know how people can garden and photograph at the same time but I am not one of these that takes garden selfies to show off to others. Do you really want to know all my gardening secrets? The thing with design is it's really about layout and putting paths in, and then the plants can be arranged later, but this whole infrastructure and systems thinking I am still getting the hang of, because I'm not in the business of construction. I can make a raised bed out of rosemary cuttings but I need all the materials to grow beforehand, with designers they seem to have the world of concrete and edging at their disposal and can carve out land with a rotovator. I don't have that luxury. Designers can also have resource consents and map things to building regulations, and the more analytically minded can put a fence here and there but I'm more well this plant wants to go here, and if it doesn't like it it will go here.
Anyway, I have very rough sketches of the ideas and vision for St Giles, as blogged previously, which is roughly some zones...hanging baskets at church entrance and containers, shady subtropical nikau bush monstera corner, espaliered fruit trees on side of church and bus stop waiting area with olives shading more seats and a little free library with Bibles, a rainwater diverter/harvester and solar gain roofing panels (with skylight for church services with natural lighting) and solar night lights for evening. A church picnic bbq area leading to flowered border and pergola archway for weddings, with subtropical plantings of banana, passionfruit, hibiscus, taro, gardenia and canna lily. By the day care centre a vege trail for children. And on the road side entrance an olive/feijoa orchard with pumpkin patch an herbal ley attracting beneficial insects. Also a grapevine.
Now if the church members start complaining it's too much maintenance and would rather pay Bob the lawnmower each week to make some noise I am seriously thinking of quitting my job to do this church garden. You can either pay someone to make a lawn desert and forget about flowers altogether or you can have something wonderful for free.
How I will pay the bills I don't know, but if nobody makes a start all the cars going past on Te Atatu will pass by and just see another church building like all the other church buildings that have carparks and may decide to worship and get married and have funerals somewhere else that at least has some flowers.
Isn't that right Lord? Banished from Eden, because of plant misidentification. You can eat all the fruit of all the trees in THIS garden, that God has given except for THAT one. So what does man do, eat from the forbidden one that kills him. It will be interesting to see this season how many forbidden trees are on display that you can't eat from, the shopping malls have already got them up and decorated, hustling for consumers.
