A plan for Eden

We're officially one step closer!!! We picked up the keys to our new house yesterday and the move is all set for this weekend (which is sure to coincide nicely with the onset of the torrrential rain). We then spent the afternoon in our new backyard, watching our very nearly three-year-old son run in and out of his new cubby house while hubby and I chatted about where to start with the yard (not to mention sneaking little looks over the fence to spy on the system our new neighbours have!).

Being in the planning stages again, it's all a bit overwhelming. Where do we begin?! We've been looking back over what we created at our current/old place. Obviously we want an improvement on it but at the same time it took two years to establish--what are we going to do with all this extra space?!

As I've said before, when we started at the old place with a clean slate we put in three beds then upgraded to four when we got the chooks and installed the fencing. About 12 months on it was looking like a bit of a dog's breakfast and I suppose this is the kind of thing we want to avoid this time around. It's not meant to be beautiful, but something practical while not being an eyesore would be great.

We got the basic concept of using the chickens to supplement the garden from a youtube clip. In the series of clips, the guy shows how to design, construct, then maintain a mandala (keyhole) style gardening system. We knew from the onset that his system was much larger than we would be able to construct in our little yard, but we loved the idea. It was also a bit too complicated than our caveman construction skills would allow. Anyway, for those who don't watch the clip, the system looks like a big bird aviary. His one is fully enclosed with wire (to keep birds and larger pests out and keep the chooks safe).

The basic idea is that there is a series of gardens arranged in a circle and each one is partitioned off to enclose the chooks. The girls then move every month to a new plot. This ensures a good rotation of plants (nothing stays long enough to get sick and attract nasties) and also, to ensure each plot is getting fertilised regularly so the soil is maintained and bursting with goodies! Best of all, keeping everything healthy makes staying organic easy. (With that said, we would watch everything get eaten by bugs before spraying poison onto our food or future food growing site).

So we're back to planning. This is a picture of our new yard from our son's room. It's bigger when you stand in it (obviously you can't see the right hand side of the yard which has a huge shed, a cubby house, and a lime tree). 

The first thing that will go is the rose garden. At this point the plan is to replace that with a simple retaining wall.

As you can see there are already two small beds up in the back lefthand corner of the yard. We're going to remove these as the previous owner dropped in while we were there and told us he had just poisoned all the weeds in them, not to mention the grass clippings that are filling them. We don't want to be fighting an uphill battle with weed killers and rogue grass control problems before we even start!

Anyway, share some thoughts and let the growing begin!