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Karma’s Photo Hunt ~ The Hill Project

Joanne

When Karma suggested a photo hunt for her blogging friends to join in on, I immediately knew which photos I needed to search for!

Last year, as I have mentioned before, I spent a lot of time revamping several of my garden beds. The hill directly opposite the front of my house was the largest project, a garden running almost the full length of the house. Plus, it’s on a sharp slope. We had tried to make the hill manageable previously, without a great deal of success – what I didn’t realise was that our first attempt at constructing a manageable and attractive garden was in 2010!

Here’s the first photo I found during the hunt –

15th April 2010, before the first Hill Project began.

As the photo shows, the hill was steep! So anything we constructed there would be a challenge to maintain. You will notice growing on the far right of the photo is a small pine cone tree. I decided this tree would be beautiful when fully grown, and would shade the front of the house.

19th October 2020 – the tree had grown!

The next photo I found during the hunt was taken in 2020. I had even convinced husband to extend the retaining wall out in front of the pine cone tree at some stage, to accomodate the tree’s roots. The original plan had been to cover the whole hill with drought tolerent ground cover plants, which may have worked well if most of the plants hadn’t struggled to get a root-hold on the slope!

By this time, husband had lost interest in helping me with the garden. Weed mat and mesh wire to hold mulch in place simply wasn’t successful on the sharp slope. I slipped down the slope when trying to pull out weeds. Also, by this time we had brought home potted plants galore from my inlaws house when we had cleaned out their property, ready for sale. It was a trying time, putting my inlaws into aged care facilities and dealing with my father-in-law’s declining health. I think it fair to say we had both lost our gardening mojo completely.

The day my seventeen year old daughter brought home a boy “she thought she might like” – nearly nineteen years ago – little did I know what an inspiration he would be to me in the years to come! I wrote a post about him several years ago, I think I called it A Man of Ideas or some such thing, as I had discovered he has a unique knack of getting into my brain, seeing the vision I have, then improving upon my ideas. He’s wonderful! So when we spoke about a possible solution to the most challenging part of my garden and threw around a few ideas, we came up with a solution that he was prepared to help me bring to fruition …

Winter 2023 ~ the Hill Project 2.0 begins!

First, the pine cone tree had to go. Next, the retaining wall needed to travel along a straight line once the roots of the tree were removed. What was I thinking when I insisted the tree stayed? Those tree roots were gynormous!!!

Three little people, along with the dogs, enjoyed watching Daddy – to the two little ones on the right – and Uncle – to the little one on the far left – hack away at the hill, essentially restructuring the land to accomodate our vision for a new, attractive, easy care, easy to access, garden.

The dry creek bed under construction.

During times of heavy rain, the far corner of the garden washes away in a stream of water which cascades down the hill. My man of Ideas suggested we construct a dry creek bed in that corner. This area of the garden is still under construction, but I think this photo, taken around October last year, shows the basic formation of what we have in mind.

And here’s the constructed garden –

The construction and planting is complete!

The height of the lower section of the retaining wall has been raised, another small block wall has been contructed and a wooden sleeper wall at the top runs along a hedge of Sacred Bamboo, Nandina Nana. It had to be a rockery garden to compliment the natural surroundings, so my son-in-law lifted the larger bush rocks into place with the mini-excavator and left several smaller rocks for me to play around with, to create the garden I had in mind.

It was a long process, but we did it! I hope my son-in-law realises how much I appreciate his contribution to everything he helps me with around the garden. Maybe the thousand times I have said thank you may have been a clue. 😉

So there are my before shots, before-before shots, during and after shots, Karma – you did say the rules of the photo hunt are loosey-goosey – right? 😉

There’s still time to join in, so why not follow the link to Karma’s Photo Hunt!

The second part of the challenge is to take a photo, one for each season of the same place, which I will join in also! I am eager to watch my new garden plants grow and change as the seasons progress. 🙂

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Published by Joanne

35 thoughts on “Karma’s Photo Hunt ~ The Hill Project”

    1. Thank you, Eliza. 🙂 I thought you would like to see a large area of my garden as I so often focus in on individual flowers (as you know!). But I am really happy with how this garden came together, and yes, the plants are already growing fast. 🙂

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  3. Wow! What a difference ten years made between the 2010 and 2020 pictures! It’s wonderful how well your son-in-law gets you and your vision and works so hard to bring it to life. I love rock gardens, my mother had one in the shade. Looking forward to seeing how yours fills in as time goes on.

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    1. The changes over a decade surprised me too, Barbara! Isn’t it funny … I saw the garden every day, yet didn’t remember how bland the bare hill looked, or how pretty the original garden was either. Without the terracing though, I just couldn’t do any weeding in the garden as the mulch was so slippery! The plants are growing well, with no losses to the summer heat, so I will post an update soon. 🙂

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    1. I am soooo looking forward to the weather cooling a bit so we can continue with the work. There’s still a bit to go, and my son-in-law has some amazing ideas in mind which I am keen to see in reality. 🙂

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  6. Oh, what a great transformation Joanne! I could have done with someone like your son-in-law in my last garden where my steep rockery was essentially all of my garden! It looks really good and easy to maintain, and I love that dry creek idea. I hope you will share a photo of it one day when it has water in it. 😃

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    1. Every gardener needs someone like my son-in-law, Cathy, but I am greedily keeping him to myself. 😉 Every time it rains, Jacob asks me if I got any photos of rain in the creek bed, but so far we have only had small amounts of rainfall at a time. It is still the rainy season, so there’s still hope!

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  7. THIS WAS SO MUCH WORK! Love that your SIL jumped in and made your vision complete. Removing that tree had to be daunting. I love a before & after, and this is an especially good one.

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    1. Thank you, Tracy. 🙂
      Removing the tree was a HUGE task! We still kept finding tree roots through the garden for weeks after, and my husband ended up digging all the lawn up -using the mini-excavator – between the house and the garden to get them out. We now have a newly turfed lawn, which looks beautiful. 🙂

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    1. I bless the day, Carol, believe me. ❤ He's so good for my daughter too, and then there's their two gorgeous children … so much to be grateful for. 🙂

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  9. Congratulations on pursuing your dream! That’s a great collection of before, after, and again photos. Your son-in-law is a jewel. My own garden also has slopes – I’ve tackled 2 of them at intervals with relative success but the steepest one I’ve abandoned to the ivy and honeysuckle that covered it for decades before we acquired the garden 13 years ago.

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    1. It sounds like you fully appreciate the difficulties of gardening on a slope, Kris. Before the first garden, you may have noticed tree stumps in the photo. They were the remains of privet trees, which multiply uninvited and are a noxious weed in our area. We left them there for several years though, occasionally thinning them out, as we just didn’t know what to do with that area of the garden.
      Could you terrace your steep hill where the ivy and honeysuckle grow?

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      1. I had that dream when we first moved in, over 13 years ago now, Jo. But the slope is VERY steep, as well as uneven and, covered with a dense layer of ivy and honeysuckle, it’s not a project either my husband or I’d be comfortable tackling on our own. I’d have to hire a professional to do it, which would be expensive, if I could even find someone willing to do it. The only way to get down there is via the narrow cement block stairway my husband created not long after we moved in and most people I know consider even that to be treacherous. There’s no way to get any heavy equipment in there 😦

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        1. That’s a shame. So you have to be content with the coverage to hold the soil in place. That’s why we left the privet trees for so long, at least they were better than bare soil.

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  10. Amazing, Joanne! What a difference. I think it’s wonderful that you have a son-in-law who was willing to help you with your dream. I’m looking forward to seeing your four seasons in the garden (if that’s what you decide to do).

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    1. Thank you, Robin. 🙂 I will definitely join Karma’s second part of the challenge.
      I will visit you soon to see if you have joined in yet! I’ve been off the air a bit, with having a cold, then my computer died, but I am spending some time catching up today. 🙂

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        1. Thank you. I’m coming good today (Monday) which I am happy about obviously. All is well with the computer too, so all of last week’s challenges are over now.

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  11. Beautiful project! It must be so satisfying to look at this every day. Yes, rules are always “loosey goosey” – you took the photo “hunt” to a different place, hunting through your archives.

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    1. Thank you, Karma! You have no idea how often I stand at the window and look out at this garden; my son-in-law does the same when he visits, just to see if he needs to ‘tweek’ anything to make it perfect. I can see his brain ticking over as he stands there, looking out, lol. ❤

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