Starting a garden from scratch

There is a derelict little patch of land around the house. To spruce it up, it really needs to be organised into a pretty and functional outdoor space. This can be a wonderful adventure combining great plants with modern space- and time-saving ideas! Let’s look at starting a garden from scratch.

We all have to start somewhere to create the garden of our dreams, and the principles of designing a small garden are just the same as for a big garden. Your journey begins with some basic questions you need to ask yourself… once you know the basics, starting a garden from scratch will seem much easier.

What style of garden do I want?

If you look at the gardens we feature regularly, it is clear that many of their layouts are based on simple and straight lines dividing the yard into different sections, many with planting beds edged neatly with cobble stones or bricks. This creates a basic ‘order’ or framework to fill in with plants, a lawn and hardscaping like paving. This grid-style of design is the easiest way to go if you are a novice gardener.

Within this ‘order’ you can opt for a low-maintenance and natural look, filling intended planting areas with swathes of grasses and tough perennials or going for a collection of succulent plants and succulent groundcovers. The other side of the coin would be a double up on formality by edging beds with low hedges and filling them with things like roses, flowering perennials, bi-annuals and seasonal annuals – more expensive and more of a handful to maintain, but so colourful and rewarding in summer…

The Basics to Starting a Garden from Scratch

Once you’ve figured out what your floor pattern should be, keeping foot traffic and access in mind, it is time to think about pathways and perhaps a little patio to sit on.

Floor Scaping

The first prize would be well-laid brick paving, perhaps combined with a smart little wooden deck. If you have a good budget to work with, it would be best to install both by professional contractors. Investing in solid hardscaping is worth it as it will add value to your property and you will have virtually no maintenance issues later. A combination of brick edging and gravel works equally well and will be lighter on your pocket.

Top Aid – Weed Membrane

Why not use materials other than gravel for pathways? These include stepping stones, paving blocks, wooden discs or even coarse decorative bark. In order for these materials to stay put and to keep weeds at a minimum, you should use this landscape fabric underneath it. Water and air are able to permeate this fabric, and you can plant young groundcovers and shrubs through it simply by cutting slits in it, allowing you to soften gravel and enhance garden paths easily and efficiently.

To add a lawn or not?

When starting a garden from scratch, to lawn or not is an important question. The lawn business has come a long way from fetching hessian bags full of grass roots from grandma’s farm garden to plant up a new lawn, which took ages to become established in suburbia. It was also back-breaking work.

THE SOD OPTION: Entrepreneurs saw the opportunity to grow, sell and install instant lawn. They would would arrive, and before you know it… the ground would be covered in thousands of small green plants. In as little as two weeks, these would be turning into a fairly established lawn in as little as two weeks! This option is still available and their product range has now expanded to include different lawn types for different uses, climates and drought resistance.

THE PLUG OPTION: Nurserymen also stock well-established lawn plugs in trays of 200 plants, including kikuyu, Berea and indigenous buffalo grass.

THE SEED OPTION: Sowing a lawn is an economic option for a small garden. Modern lawn seed mixes are designed to suit South Africa’s climate and are quite drought tolerant. These mixes can also be used to overseed existing lawns that go into winter dormancy, allowing you to have green grass throughout winter – nobody wants a dead-looking patch anymore! Don’t be scared of trying your hand at seeding a lawn. It is very successful with good soil preparation and germination is fast with regular watering in the critical period after sowing in spring and autumn.

Artificial Lawn

Artificial lawn is gaining in popularity as it needs no mowing, watering or fertilising, and supplies a soft surface to play and relax on. There are different types of artificial lawn with different pile heights, thicknesses and textures, and prices per square metre range from quite expensive to quite affordable. It is easy to lay yourself on hard surfaces like cement, but on soil it would require a firm sub base and the expertise of an artificial grass supplier.

Caring For The soil

Good soil preparation and constant caring for your precious soil is critical for healthy and lush plants. No R100 plant should ever be planted in a R2 hole… It should rather be the other way around!

To enrich all soil types and to build up beneficial microbial life in soil, be it loamy, clayey or sandy, and also to improve its water-holding capacity, you need to add well-composted organic matter. Organic matter like grass cuttings, leaves, other plant material, as well as kitchen waste, is the stuff we so callously dump in landfills despite it being ‘black gold’ if allowed to break down properly. So, when starting a garden from scratch, why pay for commercial compost if you can make your own and will always need it in the garden? Top aids:

Composters

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to compost makers. The cheapest containers are wooden boxes or plastic compost bins, with more sophisticated compost tumblers hastening the process along. All of these can fit in the smallest of gardens.

Worm Farms

Another good aid that does not cost a fortune or take up space is a worm farm with hard-working worms turning scraps and waste into nutritious worm compost and worm tea.

Super-Fast Compost is a Thing of the future

A young entrepreneur from Johannesburg is amongst the 30 South Africans under 30 years of age on this year’s Forbes list of innovators to take notice of. He designed a smart kitchen appliance called iCompost that turns kitchen waste like peels, tea bags, coffee grinds and egg shells into a dry, natural and nutrient-rich compost overnight. It is just a matter of filling the 2L bucket with kitchen scraps every day and pressing the button.

READ MORE: For the Love of Water Wise Gardening

Dealing With Water when starting a garden from scratch

‘Water-wise’ is not an empty buzz word – it is something that we should all practice as water is a scarce and expensive resource. Apart from planning your garden to be water-wise by choosing the right plants, and conditioning your soil to retain moisture for longer with modern products and mulches after planting, there are some other aids and tips you can use to save water.

• Test if your plants need watering by pushing your finger into the soil. If the soil feels damp or sticks to your finger, it does not need watering. Rather than watering lightly and often, water less often but well to encourage roots to grow deeper. Water in the early morning or late afternoon to reduce evaporation. Avoid watering on windy or hot days.
• Dig basins around trees and plants to collect rainwater and direct it to the plants rather than losing it to runoff.
• It’s better to water the roots by drenching the soil around
the plants than spraying the leaves and flowers. For watering manually with a hosepipe, attach a simple pyramid-shaped sprinkler (which does not require high water pressure) to deliver a low, consistent spray almost at ground level. Move the sprinkler every 20 minutes.
• Water leaks from taps and pipes can be costly. Repair them immediately. Using high-quality fittings will prevent wastage and they will last for many years.
• Consider installing a rainwater tank to harvest water from your roof top to use to water your garden. It will help you to leave a lighter footprint on the municipal water grid and will add value to your property. Modern water tanks are designed to fit even the narrowest of passages.

Water Elements – The Overflowing Pot

One of the joys of gardening is to plan new focal points to add interest, such as a calming water element. Since splashy or open water features are frowned upon nowadays as they are seen as water wasters, the overflowing pot fountain is a trendy option. The water is constantly recycled as it falls into a covered underground sump and pumped back again. Simple water features like these are available as ready-to-install units at garden centres and home stores.

READ MORE: Want a small food garden, too? Click here

Plants to Please

When starting a garden from scratch, choosing plants is most exciting. But there are important things to remember; take note of a plant’s mature size (so read the descriptive label attached to it!), do not overplant, keep plants in mind that look good throughout the year, and realise that there is power in repeat planting.

Two flowering perennials

Inca lilies: Very popular and easy-to-grow garden and cut flowers that are now available in dwarf sizes. Go for Alstroemeria ‘Inticancha’ in nearly every colour shade you can think of.

Salvias: Stalwarts of the summer and autumn garden. They are sun-loving, long-blooming, tough and easy to grow, and pollinators love them. Go for Salvia ‘Mysty’ dubbed as the ideal bee and butterfly drive-in. It is free-flowering with dense spikes of dark blue flowers that can be cut for the vase.

Two Contrasting Groundcovers

Lysimachia ‘Goldilocks’ (creeping Jenny): The unique lime-green, heart-shaped leaves of this spreading plant, which self-roots easily, is the perfect foil to light up any other plant.

Stachys byzantina (lamb’s ears): The silver-grey colour of the thick, soft and velvety leaves is just fabulous. Stachys is trouble-free and rapidly forms a dense mat along the ground.

Two Trustworthy Shrubs

Abelia ‘Kaleidoscope’: A dwarf abelia that has new growth in spring edged in bright yellow with light green centres. Summer shades are a rich old-gold and dark green. In autumn it changes to orange, and winter brings a fiery red colour.

Escallonia ‘Pink Elle’: Compact and bushy with glossy dark green leaves and masses of upright, bright pink flowerheads fading to soft pink.

Two Gracious Grasses

Pennisetum ‘Rubrum’: A perennial fountain grass with narrow, curving, dark burgundy leaves. Reedy stalks with downy pinkish plumes appear in summer and stay around until the end of winter.

Aristida junciformis: An indigenous tufted grass with a rich, big-hearted summer harvest of plumes.

Two Tough Hedging Plants

Einadia hastata (salt bush): A fast-growing, very hardy plant with silver-grey foliage that can sometimes change to rusty red, with eye-catching white stems. Loves to be pruned!

Searsia crenata (dune crow-berry): So tough that it grows on beach sand, this indigenous plant with its fresh green leathery foliage is famous for being turned into high or low hedging. Also loves formal pruning!

Two Desirable Trees

Citrus limon ‘Eureka’ (lemon): Every garden should have a lemon tree and this one of medium size will give you smooth-skinned fruit throughout the year.

Syzygium guineense (water pear): This slender, upright evergreen tree with its slightly fragrant and smooth lanceolate leaves has become a very fashionable small garden or pavement tree. White flowers in August to December are followed by edible dark purple fruits. A neat tree with a non-invasive root system, and not a tardy grower either.

Two popular succulents

Sedum ‘Angelina’: A low-growing, mat-forming succulent with brilliant chartreuse needle-like leaves and masses of starry yellow flowers in summer.

Echeveria elegans (Mexican snowball): A beloved succulent with dove-grey rosettes and a spreading growth habit.

containers are the finishing touch

Beautiful pots planted up with strong architectural plants are great design elements in a large garden, but for a small, beginner’s garden the recommendation is to rather play around with colourful annuals that can be changed frequently to give you maximum pleasure while still honing your gardening skills.

Calibrachoa: Fast-growing, with prolific flowering for months on end and available in a wide range of solid colours, as well as two-tones, stripes, patterns and double-flowered varieties.

Lobelia: An equally prolific bloomer good for bordering or planting in pots and window boxes. Flowers are mostly blue and purple.

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