the next big project

Now that the back bed is pretty much sorted I've turned my thoughts to the next big project.  I want to do something about this nasty little patch of grass on the side of the house.

It's almost always in the shade so the grass always struggles.  At first I thought I'd put some stepping stones but I'm going to go a step further than that.  I'm going to dig up the grass, put down some weed mat and stepping stones, then fill in with those white pebbles we have around the back.  We have heaps of extra pebbles both from emptying the fish pond and one of my first projects which was digging them out of the raised garden beds.

In addition I want to dig out a narrow bed along the fence. As you can see it's a really ugly fence.  You can also see some long straggly bits of grass growing behind the wooden boards - that's Kikuyu grass.  It's a nice and hardy turf, good for the dry climate, but it also spreads with long, thick runners and gets everywhere, including 6 inches below the wooden base to grow between the base and the metal.  Anyway I'm going to dig the grass out from there, too, and plant a climber to cover the fence.  Probably creeping fig, a dense evergreen that should cover the whole thing and grow flat against it.  Which is funny to me because it's from the same family as the fig tree and our ficus trees (the ones that look like lollipops).  What can I say, it's a hearty family of plants!