Have a look at this beauty! We’ve just finished this new border this afternoon. I moved almost all the agaves and cactii from the cluster by the pool into this new brilliant arrangement, even if I say so myself

I’m looking forward for them to mature in place and hope all visitors to our neighborhood enjoy my xeriscaped garden border.

]]> http://mahmoodsgarden.com/2011/11/18/the-xeriscaped-border-is-complete/feed/ 0 http://mahmoodsgarden.com/2011/11/11/good-progress-on-hillside/ http://mahmoodsgarden.com/2011/11/11/good-progress-on-hillside/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:06:23 +0000 admin http://mahmoodsgarden.com/2011/11/11/good-progress-on-hillside/ Have a look at the progress done on Op Hillside since this morning: Really glad. And I think once finished it will be quite unique too. We’ll be leaving things to set now and put the plumbing and plants in … Continue reading →]]>

Have a look at the progress done on Op Hillside since this morning:

Really glad. And I think once finished it will be quite unique too. We’ll be leaving things to set now and put the plumbing and plants in place next weekend.

Can’t wait!

Today I start the “hills” outside the house. This area was just lined with conacarpus trees hiding the beauty of the house and not contributing much to the environment.

Not going to divulge much now other than to say xeroscaping is probably be nicer with less maintenance.

I just realized that I didn’t introduce Hope on the blog! Sorry. Well, meet Hope, the newest addition and the very much long awaited addition to the garden. Here she is sitting at her pond and being quite happy and content.

I had my eye on her for months, but unfortunately the seller and I couldn’t agree on a price. Now that they’re going out of business, they have met my stipulated price and I brought her over about 3 weeks or so ago, and yesterday afternoon was an opportune moment for to me clean up around her and spruce up her throne a bit. Now with the cable and various pipes hidden, I’m quite happy too.

With the change in the weather, the gardening season is most certainly upon us. Not to let our office garden to miss out, we cleaned it up and planted many geraniums and bordered them with lovely alyssum. It’s been a couple of weeks since they were planted, and as you could probably see form the picture, some of the flowers are starting to bloom. So far, the white geraniums have come through, making the garden take on a definite white motif this year.

Chrysanthemums border, originally uploaded by malyousif.

I went a bit crazy with chrysanthemums this year as I filled in a complete border with about 40 mumms of pink, red and white. I edged the approximately 4 meter border with 50 lobelias and added red dianthus at one end. I’m sure that if they all take – and as of this morning they’re looking that they are – the border will look quite nice.

Have you started your season’s planting yet? What’s your garden looking like? Would love to know.

It was a hectic day yesterday and only got back home at around 11PM. But immediately I parked the card and walked into the garden, I went to check the progress on “the mound”. Although it was dark (obviously) I was happy to witness its completion. Time is king now as only time will really improve it and get it to weave properly together and make it a complete whole.

I’m happy that the 60 trays of sod was enough to cover the full area. I saw this morning that a couple of slivers are left exposed and will buy just one more tray to cover those little areas. But overall, I’m quite happy with it.

Here are some pictures:

The weather has finally turned in Bahrain. It’s no longer the stifling 50C, to a much more tolerable 35-40C. It was hovering between 30-35C over the weekend, which got me to finally get out and work in the garden. And that I did.

I missed doing “real” things in the garden. My garden is a little of 6 years old so it’s much more mature than it was when we started obviously. But that, I mean the trees have reached a respectable height now and are providing nice shade. The shrubs are all happy with their locations, and some are even fighting with each other. Almost all the plots are filled and there is hardly a place to position new plants unless I allow the lawn to be eaten into, which is something I have allowed to happen over the past few years.

With maturity, I guess it’s only natural to suffer from some hard to get rid of weeds. This is not a declaration of defeat, but just a fact of life and one that makes gardening somewhat interesting. A case in point is a nice mound in our front garden which for some reason got to be taken over by weed. I couldn’t bring myself to pour chemicals over it to get rid of the weeds, so I took this opportunity to take radical action!

I decided to remove all the grass and weed off the complete area and create approximately a five meter circle, get 10 tonnes of garden sand and create a new mound, a bit higher and hopefully much cleaner one. I tasked my trusty gardener Roy to start digging the area and get rid of all the grass and weed. He did that over a week or so (Roy only comes in twice a week for a couple of hours each time) and we left the patch as is to make sure that we didn’t miss anything. That done, Roy moved the sand into the garden and mixed in four 70 liter bags of compost into the sand, added some fertiliser and generally prepared the area to receive a carpet of Japanese grass next week!

Now to make it a bit more interesting, I decided to create a band of about 30 centimeters deep around the circle, inserted plastic divider both on the outside and inside of this band and decided to fill that band with river stones. I think the place will look quite dashing when it’s planted.

Here are a some pictures shot this afternoon for you to have a look at the progress so far.

That wasn’t the only thing we did this past weekend. My wife and I were out in the garden throughout Friday and most of Saturday as well. We purchase 660 kgs of river stones and I covered the area around the two Washingtonias by the pool (pictures to come soon), the first area was around nine square meters and the other was just over four square meters. We also purchased about twenty 70 liter bags of pine bark and spread those over a problematic flower bed on the North side of the garden. The design of the house and the garden there might as well be a Venturi tube! Wind comes in from the sea and almost gusts down that path. So it’s very difficult to get many things to grow there, and even the trees we planted there take a lot longer to establish. The rusty red colour of the bark contrasts very well with the green grass.

I also took the opportunity to cover a small bed by the front door and another under my study’s French windows. The place looks like it has received a nice fresh lick of paint now!

But it’s not over! I have an old small pond whose pump packed up. It was like this for several months I confess, I just didn’t get a chance (or the gumption) to do anything about it other than clean the pump and filter, get it to work for a few minutes – or hours if I’m lucky – and then just leave as is. Well no more! I got a good sized submersible pump and installed it there last evening. Now the water is circulating quote well and at last we hear the nice sounds of a water fall to add to the nice atmosphere of the garden.

It was a pleasant and very satisfying weekend. Needless to say both Frances and I slept like logs those nights to wake up to some welcome muscle pain the next day.

They’re delivering 60 trays of Japanese grass tomorrow so Roy should be able to lay the carpet over the mound. Can’t wait for that operation to complete…

The Cactii Patch, originally uploaded by malyousif.

I love this arrangement. I change it around once in a while, but generally I’m really happy I opted to replant most of the cactii in pots about 3 years ago.

Have a wonderful weekend my friends.

A quick tour of my garden shot this morning – entirely on the iPhone 3Gs so please excuse the quality. I just wanted to primarily show the beautiful Gladiolus Callianthus (the Peacock Orchid) shown at the start of this clip, but I just got carried away and shot other things in my garden.

Hope you enjoy. Oh, and if you do, please let me know by commenting or faving the video and I’ll create more videos for you to enjoy.