When we owned our first house, I had a large vegetable garden. Very large. I had visions of growing enough veges to feed our family. No longer would we be reliant on the supermarket! No longer would we eat vegetables that had been sprayed!

In reality, we grew potatoes and not much else. With a husband at work full time, a toddler and a newborn, there was no time to create the vege garden with beautiful rich, dark soil that I had craved. We ended up turning two thirds of into lawn and even that didn't grow spectacularly well.

When we bought our next house, the backyard was much smaller. I wanted to stay away from a huge vege garden, and so my husband designed and built two raised beds. Ironically, I now find that they are too small, and over summer I think we'll put in some more beds, perhaps like this:

That would mean taking out some of the lawn that has been so painstakingly laid. We wanted a biggish patch of lawn for the children to run around on, but with kindergarten and school looming for all three, as well as living in a city that is well provided for in terms of parks, beaches and school playgrounds, having so much lawn doesn't seem that important anymore.

In my two tiny raised beds at the moment we have lots of cauliflower and broccoli:

Lots of silverbeet:

And some teeny tiny beetroot seedlings that have been languishing since mid autumn.

Even though growth slows down dramatically in a cold Dunedin winter, I delight in the fact that there aren't any white butterflies to decimate my brassicas and leave their caterpillars in what looks like a lovely head of broccoli. Being more than a little squeamish, I'm not about to pick them off and feed them to the birds. I try not to use sprays on our food crops, and I'm too disorganised to get out there with the derris dust after every rainfall.

Plan for Spring planting? Peas (all the kids love eating them straight from the plant), radishes, beans, leeks, carrots, lettuces and anything else I can squeeze in. The children have their own little garden- at the moment they have some pea seedlings, a couple of strawberry plants and a lot of weeds.

I don't want any vegetables, thank you. I paid for the cow to eat them for me.
Doug Coupland

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I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

But that's what we've got.

Fifteen different rose bushes, including four standards and two miniatures. A standard rose has been planted in each corner, reminiscent of a traditional, formal rose bed. There is the ubiquitous 'Iceberg' and 'Graham Thomas' as well as 'Moody Blue' a deep lilac colour lightening to an almost blue and a deep pink carpet rose.

Amongst the rose bushes there is 'Sharifa Asma'

And the beautiful 'Aotearoa New Zealand

As well as the David Austin 'Leander'

And my favourite so far, 'Claude Monet'

I obviously have a fondness for the old fashioned Hybrid Tea bloom, as well as a strong lean towards shades of pink. Most of the bush roses came from The Warehouse- I chose carefully and made sure that each bush had at least strong canes pruned in a vase shape. I was pleasantly surprised by the selection at The Warehouse- each bush was $9.99 as opposed to Nichol's $26.99 and I was able to choose roses that weren't on Nichol's rose list. 

Each rose was carefully planted in a hole much larger than the roots, to allow for plenty of air flow and lots of nice rich earth for the plants to get their roots into. At the bottom on each hole I tossed a banana skin- roses LOVE the potassium. The ash from our pellet fire can also be dug into the garden. My method is to throw it on before heavy rain, and let the weather do the work. I also labelled each rose with their name and breed.

At the moment, each rose looks like this:

I look forward to the glorious display in Spring and Summer. 

A couple of months ago, I planted two hundred daffodil bulbs in our front garden. The garden is also home to Daphne Bholua and Camellia "Twilight".

 I was a bit unsure how successful the planting would be- the ground is still "under construction" as you can see and needs plenty of compost dug into it still. However, I was delighted this week to see some green shoots raising their heads above the earth. Certainly not two hundred of them, but a good start nonetheless!

 I have a special place in my heart for spring bulbs- planting in late autumn gives hope through the long winter months, and seeing their shoots pop up strengthens your belief that Spring WILL be coming, even though the soil is frozen and the footpaths are covered in frost.

 With a bit of luck, the ground will be smothered in Daffys come Spring- hope really DOES spring eternal.