PHOTOGRAPHY CLANCY PAINE
Ornamental grasses that don’t require pruning and good mulching reduce the amount of time Claire needs to spend in her garden.
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Practical shortcuts to help you make the most of your time in the garden.
WORDS CLAIRE AUSTIN
PHOTOGRAPHY CLANCY PAINE
Ornamental grasses that don’t require pruning and good mulching reduce the amount of time Claire needs to spend in her garden.
For me, when I focus on one aspect of my life, I feel like I well and truly let go of other areas… everything else falls apart. If I spend a few days in the garden, the washing stays on the line a little longer and the inside of the house seems to be total chaos.
A friend and I were recently talking about this, and she suggested to me that the interests of many busy mums can more or less can be divided into one of these categories: work, gardening, cooking and fitness.
I clearly land firmly in the gardening category. If I get a spare 30 minutes, it’s used in the garden. I often wander outside to put the washing on the line, only to return an hour later, having noticed a patch that needed weeding, and then I’ve taken the weeds to the chooks or the horses.
Recently, our local gym put on an eight-week fitness challenge. Actually, calling it a gym is a bit of a misnomer: it’s a tin shed, with Pilates reformer machines lined up against one wall and all the gym equipment you can think of filling the
rest of the space. There are three instructors, all university-qualified exercise physiologists (and one is also a nutritionist). We are lucky.
A group of us meet at 6am to do a workout or a class. After week two of the challenge, our group chat began to be filled with conversation about how our recent gym obsession had caused the rest of our lives to descend into complete chaos. Washing piling up, dinners being prepared in a scramble; the list goes on and on.
While I probably need to be better at doing everything in moderation so that I can fit more into our already jam-packed lives, I don’t know if I can do it. For me, things seem to come in waves. Gardening in late spring when the weather is lovely (not too hot, not too many snakes) fills my days. I’d love to be able to get to the gym more, but its hard to make time, especially when you throw in a garden day at my house as a school fundraiser.
Our gardens are what we make them. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard wiser women say, ‘She’s making a rod for her own back’ when referring to the high-maintenance gardens people are blithely planning.
The key to having a garden and a life that runs smoothly is to keep it all low maintenance. The bulk of the work in my garden can be done in winter and spring. We seem to have more days at home then. I can prune the roses, get the structural projects done and spend time putting out mulch. The farm isn’t as busy and I can borrow a trailer to do things.
One of those things is collecting mulch. For me, mulching is essential: it makes the garden beds look so much tidier and helps reduce weeds and water loss through evaporation in the heat of summer. Another reason for doing the heavy lifting in the cooler months is that you can relax and enjoy the garden over summer and the holiday period. Also, an irrigation system helps, a lot. I couldn’t have my garden without it.
1. Mulch
Mulch suppresses weed growth and reduces evaporation in summer. I use 5-10cm of lucerne mulch, which also adds nitrogen and potassium to the soil.
2. Drip irrigation
A drip irrigation system reduces time spent watering the garden and ensured efficient application.
3. Low-needs plants
Choose plants that require little in the way of hands on care, such as pruning. Try ornamental grasses, salvias and sedums.
4. Weeding
Removing weeds before they set seed will save you more work the following year.
5. Hard spaces
Hard landscaping doesn’t require much maintenance. I’ve recently create a gravelled fire pit area, which replaced a garden bed.
Claire Austin runs the Gin Gin Garden Club, an online community. Follow her on Instagram @gingingardenclub.
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