Tag Archives: Garden Design

Hanging baskets

Garden Design, Gardening

This is the first time I try my hands at hanging baskets.

I bought 4 large ceramic hanging baskets from Al-Sultan Garden Centre in Khobar a while ago and they’ve been staring at me in the shed since. I finally got the chance to coax them off the shelf and onto brackets in the weekend (Sat, 8 Dec, ’07). With the help of my daughter Hanan, we installed four brackets on the walls of the house by the pool and hung the pots. They look quite funky: yellow, orange, white and white.

Once installed, I planted the following seeds in individual pots and am hoping for the best:

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As I had a few Nasturtiums and Freesias left over, I planted them in two independent pots which I placed on the front porch. The left-over Nasturtiums I planted in the front-door planter.

I’m looking forward to once again eat the spicy Nasturtium flowers!

The Cuttings Border is complete

Garden Design
Cuttings border [before]

Cuttings border

The Cuttings Border

The Cuttings Border, originally uploaded by malyousif.

I was determined to finish this border so I attacked it when I got home from work last night. It took me about 3 hours to finish this new border in which I laid down the irrigation pipe and just a few drip-heads for the banana tree, dig the front of the border and then carefully lay the red-bricks, level the earth in front and behind them then install the white metal fence in its place. I didn’t put a door there as it’s low enough to get in and out of the area if needed.

The main idea behind putting this little fence in the first place – apart from it looking nice – is to get the dogs to think that this is a private area and that they’re not allowed in, considering this border is right next door to their kennel! They’re good like that and get the idea very quickly of what’s private and what’s theirs. Most of the time.

It’s almost ready to receive some seeds and plenty of bulbs. The remaining job is to install the drip heads all along the pipes and that’s it done.

Just imagine what it would look like in 12 weeks’ time or so!

Cuttings border

Garden Design, Gardening, General
Cuttings border [before]

Cuttings border

The first phase of the new “cuttings border” is now complete. I’ve spent most of the day clearing the grass and preparing the area for planting. I mixed in 4x 50kgs bags of cow manure and 350 liters of peat moss for good measure. This are is part of the front garden and it receives the sun throughout the day regardless of the season. So I wanted to make sure that there is enough stuff in there to keep the moisture.

There are a couple more things I need to do to make it completely, other than planting of course, but on the structure side. I need to put in the drip lines throughout the area and put in the fence I bought this morning from Manazil.

I think as I intend to use it to grow flowers for cutting, one additional feature might be some paving tiles to create a simple walkway. I’ve got a few of those left over from other projects that I might use. I will also create a red-brick border to prevent the grass from creeping in again from the lawn.

What are the plants I want to put in there? Bulbs and various other flowers that could be cut and put in vases all around the house!

Optimistic? You bet! I’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to learn. So if you know any specific flowers which lend themselves to the task and can grow happily in Bahrain, please do let me know.

A very satisfying weekend

Garden Design, Gardening

There is so much happening in my little patch of Heaven that it’s difficult to find a place to start. Suffice it to say that it was brilliantly tiring! I love it. I really do. Such a sense of fulfillment is really hard to come by. I guess this is one of the major reasons that I have been so taken by gardening. It is truly a rewarding activity.

Since putting Mr. Buddha in his place to christen the Oriental patch, the adjoining side which is overlooked by the “Old Lady”, our trusty and gnarled Frangipani we brought with us from the old house, just didn’t look right. It had a few shrubs here and there, a few cacti at the back wall (I got those for my last birthday) and well, it now looked completely unbalanced. So it need a major rethink on what I wanted it to be.

I decided to make it complement the Oriental patch, in fact, I wanted it to be completely integrated and not regarded as a separate piece of the garden at all. I decided that probably the best thing to do there is take everything (apart from the Old Lady) out and cover the whole area there with stones or pebbles. This will immediately bring the “Zen” back into the game and the Oriental patch would simply flow into the dry river-bed motif.

Plan in place, I started working. The first thing was to remove all the cacti and put them in pots, those pots I wanted to position on the pool deck in a cluster of variously sized pots and shapes. I think looking at the previous post where I featured this change, you will probably agree that they look quite the picture. I promise you that in real life they look even better!

Not all were moved as I didn’t have enough pots. I certainly didn’t have a huge pot which I needed (wanted) for the big cactus. That then had to wait until I bought more pots and they get delivered. I had two bushes in there too that needed to come out, a hibiscus and a lantana. The lantana was thriving while the hibiscus was just sitting there not doing much, but not dying either. A bunch of mother-in-law’s tongues and another cactus as well as a henna tree were scattered in that patch too.

I was rather happy that I moved the majority of the cacti on Thursday evening. That would free up a lot of time for Friday and beyond to tackle the various tasks.

Friday morning comes and I am awake at 4.45AM (I know I know!) and down having some tea, reading the papers and thinking about the stuff I needed to do. By 8.00AM I had cooked breakfast and had everyone up! I needed to get out and wanted to drag Frances out with me too. Time for some quality time together too.
Continue Reading →

Shopping!

Garden Design, Gardening
Shopping!

Shopping!, originally uploaded by malyousif.

A Friday is not Friday if I don’t go visit some garden centres. Fortunately, as it is “the season” they do have nice things and it is the best time to landscape in Bahrain. The stuff you see in the back on my car all went into the “Oriental garden”.

I spent the whole day out of the house, the first few hours were spent in garden centres getting what I needed (you only see a small part of what I got in this picture!) and then the remainder of the day working over the Frangipani Patch which is now an integral part of the Oriental Garden. I’ll post some pictures of my efforts tomorrow.

Other than the stuff in the back of my car, I got deliveries this afternoon of 1,000 kgs of river stone, 8 big pots, 4 bags of 50 ltrs compost, 175 petunias of various colours and I an awful lot of backbreaking work, and the patch is still not finished!

Have a wonderful weekend my friends… a bit later than usual I know, but I hope you understand.

The cacti gathering

Garden Design, Gardening
The cacti gathering

The cacti gathering, originally uploaded by malyousif.

The weekend has officially started! I’ve taken some time off work this afternoon to come and spend some time in the garden, an activity I haven’t been able to partake in for almost a week – yes, I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms – and I have put the first phase of my plan already in motion.

I’ve relocated these lovely cacti from their erstwhile abode which has been taken over by Mr. Buddha, and potted them and gathered them in this location on the pool deck. I think they look rather fetching now, don’t you?

They were definitely lost in their previous location.

Have a wonderful weekend my friends, I know I plan to :)

Progress report – 071019

Gardening

Remember I said before that I thought the lawn was being over-watered? Well last night I determined to find out by how much, and that meant donning the swimming trunks on (is that picture firmly in your mind yet? Good! :twisted: ) and turned on the sprinkler system and investigated each zone separately. I determined that Zone 1 in particular had too many sprinklers. I have no idea why the company I initially commissioned to do the garden decided on that many; in any case, I identified four sprinklers that could be done away with and did the necessary plumbing to disconnect them. I’ll only get to see the result of that decision in the next few weeks and will keep you updated. There are still some more to be removed from the other three zones, but the situation there is not as severe as zone 1.

With that done, I turned my attention to planing the new flower beds created around the two Cassia fistulas and filled those with seedlings from the nursery. I put the Scabious Scarlet Empress (B&Q) on the inside surrounded on the outside by Antirrhinum Monarch Mixed (B&Q). The distance both in depth and breadth is approximately 30 cms between each seedling and the next. I know that this might be a bit crowded, but I want this effect. If I find that they are just too crowded in the future, it will be easier to remove some plants rather than try to put some more in.

I did some more work in the garden this afternoon by clearing the font path’s beds and turning them over, making them ready for planting something in there – petunias if Frances gets her way! With the number of really interesting seeds I’ve got and am cultivating, I think they will probably be better there, and I’ll keep the petunias for the street beds. I’ll think on it a bit. There is no real rush there as I want to turn the drip system in those areas off for a couple of days to try to dry them a bit and then mix in some compost to receive whatever we decide to plant in there.

The same treatment was given to other beds around the garden to liven them up for this season’s plantings which I am really looking forward to. In anticipation of that, I’m cultivating some more seeds in the nursery. Here’s a list of seeds I planted in seed trays tonight:

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Man, what a wonderful day it has been!

Garden Design, Gardening

I was out for practically the whole day in the garden! I accomplished a lot considering I wasn’t working toward a deadline; it was see this, think about it, do it! Brilliant.

For (my) record, let me list what I have done:

    1. Southern border extended:

    To my surprise, one of my Cassia fistulas broke its tie to the cane (it’s a young plant of less than 2 years) and just collapsed on the ground! Needless to say the warning bells were ringing rather loudly. On investigation I found that the ground around it was not compact at all, it was very spongy and the roots were not penetrating deep into the ground, considering the age of the tree. It could be because of the zillions of ants I have around the garden (suggestions to eradicate them welcome) or even more probably it is because with the ready availability of water, it just didn’t bother rooting at all! That also explains the slow growth I have had with this one and its neighbour.

    It’s strange that even after 3 years living in this house and being in the garden countless times, things just don’t hit you as awkward. I guess this is how experience is gained. I looked at the water sources around the tree and I found about 6 sprinklers in an area of about 8 – 10 square meters! One was directly behind the tree, another in front and yet another about a couple of feet to the side! So it was getting far too much water… It wasn’t a good idea to plant them in the middle of the lawn!

    I decided the best thing to do is disconnect three sprinklers and move just one to be positioned in between the two Cassias; that would give them enough water to flourish and would water the lawn sufficiently enough – I hope.

    So I created a wave: Continue Reading →