Neighbourly mulch

Mulch. It's pretty much just bits of broken up twigs and leaves but judging from the amount it costs to buy you would think you were laying out a red carpet.

I have been putting off buying this ($80 a trailer load/$160 delivered) gold to put on my native garden that I have created even though the garden is in desperate need of it. But the wait paid off because today while walking in my neighbourhood I came across some people chopping down a tree.

Something compelled me to go ask the guy if he was going to mulch any of the mess he was making. He told me no but how much did I need because he had a pile at the top of his drive. SCORE!

So to cut a boring story (to other people other than myself) short we went back with the car, shovelled some mulch and applied it to the garden. It looks terrific!

So this got me thinking...if we talked to our neighbours more surely we could all be a little bit more self-sufficient?

Neighbourly mulch

The native garden

My wonderful friend Jay came down from Auckland to help us begin landscaping our garden. Not many people I know would pack a skill saw in their backpack for a weekend away!

The first project was to create a native garden. The idea behind this was I wanted to create a garden for native birds to visit. When we lived in Wilton we had Tui, Piwakawaka and Kereru visit all the time.

To start we finished putting edging in to create a garden (Mary and I had started this a few weeks earlier) and dug up the grass to expose the soil and began digging holes for the new plants.

I was fortunate enough to have been told to help myself to any native seedlings I needed from the small patch of bush outside our previous neighbours house. Jay and I took the spade and came back with a boot full of green harakeke (flax), mapou, horoeka (lancewood), and puahou (five finger). I had already collected some rengarenga lilies from my workplace (they divide so easily)!

I was fortunate to have been given a garden voucher from the families at my last workplace so I spent it putting the finishing touchs to the garden. I'm also awaiting for the kowhai tree I have ordered to be ready. All it needs now is some extra soil and some leaf mulch to give it that organic look.

Let the transformation begin....

The native garden