The Garden Clean-up Begins

Before moving in to our "new" home, we knew we would be faced with an enormous challenge in the back garden. Over the years it was obvious that the previous owner's gave little care to the backyard, as it was over grown, and full of rubbish. Various structures and sheds were built with the purpose of housing even more rubbish. The previous owners also left their chickens to us, and their home (the chickens) was an old corrugated water tank re-purposed as the hen house. Inside it was like a haunted house - spider webs, chicken droppings, and off course did I mention the rats?

Beyond that date palm hides the 'back garden' - home to the chickens

The passage to the Chicken House

Another headache was a massive pile of coffee rock, which was excavated to make way for the house foundations, and instead of being carted offsite at the time, was conveniently dumped in the backyard. Out of sight, out of mind. I hadn't even thought about what to do with it yet. The real estate agent had casually mentioned during our inspection of the house "oh, just put it up on Gumtree (the local classified website here in Australia) and someone will take it away for free". Looking at the size of pile, I now knew that wouldn't be easy, and the agent was just doing her job - trying to sell the house. In hind sight, I probably should have made it a condition of sale, that the pile of rocks be removed at the previous owners cost. Unfortunately, we were now the new owners of the pile!

On that point, the house had been for sale for over 12 months before we came along, and I found out later from the neighbours that prospective buyers would come to visit the house, see the state of the garden, and then promptly run away as fast as possible! It seems most buyers here in Perth want a backyard with everything done for them, a sparkling pool, a shed and a garden - not a finger to lift. Not me though, I like a challenge, and a blank canvas to start off with, even if that canvas needs a bit of a wipe first!

The pile of rocks

Although there was a lot of rubbish that needed removal there were some gems in the rough.

A perfectly well built cubby house (well apart from the stairs and walls), which, with a little work, would be a hit with the kids. There were also various mature fruit trees dotted around the yard. A loquat tree, olives, figs and citrus.

I'm passionate about GYO (Grow Your Own) and have always been into fruit trees, not only for the fruit, but for the beautiful form fruit trees (especially the deciduous varieties) bring to a garden.  Naturally, the plan for the back was to plant as many fruit trees as I could squeeze in, amongst those already there.

This tree was shading the clothes lines, and had to go.

Various mature citrus varieties

After slashing the over grown trees and dumping the rubbish via the council provided skip bin services, the next task was to gather as much reusable resources as possible, mainly from dismantling the timber and metal sheets from the structures. These will be used for future projects.

The free council skip bins proved invaluable in dumping a lot of the rubbish

Speaking of resources, I have been thinking of what do with the pile of rocks, as I like to reuse as much of the resources that I already posses. I think I may have found a solution! To be continued...