Today I am madly preparing before going away for a week to take Mum to visit family in Western Victoria.

This morning I finished mulching the street garden. I have now finished preparing it for summer. This photograph shows the view from the footpath. The part of the garden in the foreground gets some shade from the small tree so it has been easier to establish plants here. I have planted a couple of baby snapdragons here as an experiment to see if the established plants give enough shelter to help them thrive.

A number of people stopped to admire it and have a chat. Our volunteer gardening group who planted this garden wants the gardening to help lift social isolation as well as reduce rubbish dumping and improve the environment more generally. It is a small thing, but exchanging pleasantries and talking about the garden like this lifts my day. I feel that the people who stop to chat also feel good from the exchange.

It is interesting that people with limited English are more likely to stop and chat - not so much native English speakers. We do most of our gardening on the weekends and live in an area that is quite multicultural, including inner-urban native English speaking professionals and younger people.

On second thoughts, most of the people who stop to chat are older people. Is this one of those intersectional things? Maybe it is the age of a person that makes them more inclined to stop and chat?

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I was up early this morning. After watering last night and overnight rain, the street garden is nicely damp. I used the remainder of our pea-straw mulch on the hottest part of the garden which faces the road. I then gave it some more water to damp down the mulch so it does not fly around in the breeze.

Aside from finishing the mulching I think I have done as much as I can to prepare for a hot, dry summer. It is looking good at the moment but it will be interesting to see how much survives the summer and people/animals treading on plants.

I think we are no longer having problems with people stealing plants (crossing fingers). An elderly Greek woman with little English has caught some people digging up plants and told them to stop doing it. She told me this via her grandson who translated. I suspect that her limited English made her message to the plant stealers rather blunt! Guarding the garden in this way is her contribution to maintaining it. She has lived in the street for over 40 years and loves the garden very much.

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After slouching on the couch watching TV this afternoon, I got out onto the street garden and planted a couple of snap dragons. In keeping with the principle of spending nothing on plants for that garden, the snap dragons are plants that had self-seeded in pots in our backyard. I have pot some more pots under the flowering snap dragons to catch any seeds.

I also transplanted a succulent that was getting crowded out by other flourishing plants in the back of our street garden to the front part. The front part faces the road and gets brutally jot and dry during summer. It is hard work establishing plants there. The back part seems to now be well-established. This means that I can have a go at growing more sensitive plants as the established plants provide some shelter and generally help to lower the temperature.

Tomorrow I need to mulch it thoroughly. Then it will be hopefully ready for summer.

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I managed to get 1 nasturtium flower out of our hot, dry street garden! @deirdres

I am celebrating a very small thing. 😁
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Someone has done their annual dump of something on our street garden. It has weeds and I found a couple of worms when I spread it around. Last year I spread it around the garden and it seems to have disintegrated into the soil - no sign of it now.

The latest dump has been on the garden for about a week so it is definitely not fertiliser as this much fertiliser would have killed the plants it touched and squashed. My guess is that it is hydroponics mix?

What do you think it is?

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Our street garden has survived the hot weather well. I watered it at the start of the hot weather, then tested the dampness below the surface yesterday morning. The mulch we put on before Christmas had done its job and the moisture levels were just right.

In not so good news someone deliberately buried metal parts under the mulch so they could be barely seen.

Why??? Why do this when we provide a rubbish bin on the street to put rubbish in?

At any rate a neighbour and I spent some time digging it up and replanting displaced plants.
#GardeningAU #Melbourne #StreetGarden