This is part 10 of The Garden Guide — the studio's field manual for building a native garden from bare ground in Canberra and the Southern Tablelands. Start at the overview if you've just arrived.
What to expect, and what to do, once everything is in the ground.
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Daily, at first | Check moisture and water as required. Learn how fast your garden dries out — that instinct is worth more than a schedule. |
| First 3 months | Stay on top of weeds reshooting after the initial clearing. This is the window where you prevent them re-establishing. |
| 6–12 months | Re-mulch — but only about 25% of the original volume. The plants have filled in and are covering the ground themselves now. |
| Ongoing | Stay off the soil where you can. Same routes, or stepping stones. |
A healthy living soil keeps building — deeper, richer, more diverse, more resilient. You started it. It carries on without you.
Making more plants
The cheapest plants in your garden are the ones already in it.
Division. Vegetative propagation by division: lift an established clump, split it, replant the pieces. Each piece needs roots and a growing point. They keep spreading, and you repeat the process indefinitely. It costs nothing.
Staging a garden this way. Plant out a quarter or half the garden now. Six months on, when things have bulked up, lift and divide them — and use the divisions to plant the next section. The garden pays for its own expansion. This is also the answer when the plant count is over budget: halve the area, not the density. Dense planting establishes, and establishing plants become free plants.
Paths
Gravel and mulch paths are both cheap. Paving works in plenty of situations — it depends on the house and the style. From a design point of view: look for colours and materials that echo the house. Cohesion lets the hardscaping recede and become unobtrusive, so the plants can carry the space. That's what creates a feeling of harmony — the built things stepping back, the living things stepping forward.
A last thought
We live in a world full of technological marvels, and they have given us the highest quality of life in history. That's worth being glad about. It's also worth being honest about what made it possible: a planet that carried the whole thing.
I think we owe that some respect. And a garden is one of the few places where you get to pay it back directly, at the scale of your own two hands.
Your garden, cared for, becomes a refuge for disturbed wildlife. Steward it with respect and integrity.
If you build good soil, the soil will look after your plants. The plants are for you and for the birds — but the soil is the work.
This series comes from the Garden Guide I give my design clients. I write one letter a week on spatial design, craft and technology — and subscribers read the full guides first.
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