Marylyngarden

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Marylyn’s Garden in Hartbeespoort - South Africa

Setting up the garden

The photos in the following slideshow were taken when we were setting up the garden.The first is the most interesting as you can see the soil conditions in the background behind the pool. The ground is composed of small boulders and clay and you can clearly see the slope of the ground.

We had a long box built on the boundary next to the road and in this we imported good quality soil. We then put up the wooden lattices so that the plants that we were putting in were given some form of support. In the box we planted melalucas, climbing roses, bouganvilleas, hibiscus, viburnum and bottle brush plants which are fairly quick growers.

In the rest of the garden we imported river sand to go over the clay/boulders so that we could try and get the garden level.

Next to the pool we made the coloured stones and stepping stone area and you can see the circular stone area in the background where there is a cluster of giraffes.

We decided not to plant grass and go for low maintenance as there would be times when we weren’t here for a few weeks. However we have found that over the five years we have been here we didn’t anticipate the amount of pruning required on the hedge. The weeding is not too bad in winter but needs weekly work in summer.

The garden now

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You see euphorbia (vertical cacti – like organ pipes) and aloes growing in the country – common as chips. You can grow just about anything at Hartbeespoort. My neighbour has a huge protea bush which she brought as a cutting from Cape town and it grew so quickly that she had about 30 beautiful flowers on it within a year. I have a king protea which has flowered twice but has nothing on it at the moment.

The clivia has seen better days but is very pretty.

The paw paw tree looking a bit sad as the frost hit it, but the leaves will start growing soon.

The strelitzia was also hit by the frost so we had a big cull and found the flower hiding –these plants grow very tall. They were about six metres high here so we got in a garden service to cut them down as they do encourage spiders which kept coming into the house – harmless but the size of your palm. The strelitzias are very hardy.