The surprise garden
Garden writer Kelly Dyer finds a surprise when she gets home.
It’s not every day you arrive home from work to find that you have an entirely new garden, ready to plant, that wasn’t there when you left in the morning. That’s exactly what happened to me last Friday though.
When we bought out house there was a very neglected garden at the front: the kind from those bygone days when polythene liner covered with scoria to keep the weeds away was the height of fashion.
Time had ravaged the garden when we moved in – dirt had accumulated and wind blown seeds had colonized the layer on top of the polythene – and we’ve spent the last three years with “clean out the driveway garden” on the ‘To Do List’.
We have done bits and pieces of the job, pulling up weeds here, chopping down the conifer and other assorted trees there. But the garden still had that layer of scoria and polythene making it unusable. 
Until now. In a surprise treat, my lovely parents helped Mark (my husband) clean it out, take all the crud to the dump and fill it with good pea straw and garden mix soil. All while telling me they were only here to help us finish of our other large garden project, a garden filled with natives.
And, having had three years to plan what to do with the garden once it was sorted, there’s no hesitation about re-purposing it as a citrus grove and wildflower garden. I can taste the blood oranges already.
Gosh, Kelly, how nice – hope we find a new garden when weget back from the jungles of Thailand!