How it was: Geraniums and daisies galore!
No pruning or adequate mulching, making the plants look stressed and weather-worn.
No planning or design, making it look untidy and awkward. 
As it is now: Almost all the geraniums and daisies have been removed.
We have replaced them with mondo grass, a maori sunrise and other grass-plants, a dwarf-lavender, native hibiscus, and a carpet rose.
We removed all geraniums, daisies and irises from around our (lone) peach tree, and instead have put in a small grass shrub and a dwarf-conifer.
All the plants we used, including the beautiful silver coastal grass-plant (centre), are supposed to be drought and frost tolerant, two very important pre-requisites for a northern Flinders Ranges garden.
Oh I wish I was there with you! Love gardening. My head is just going crazy right now… All sorts of herbs should be okay, a lot of them can handle drought and a lot of them are silver/grey which works with the color idea you guys had. Carnations, some roses should work too… lamb’s ear but they are really boring in the winter. Different kind of sedum. Don’t know how things work down there but you might want to have something evergreen, perhaps box? You can plant it in a pot a dig it down and it will keep all the water you give it so it won’t dry out as easily. I’m a sucker for tall verbena but here, and for me it’s not working at all but I’ve heard it can become a weed in Australia. It’s purple so it doesn’t go with the color.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a wonderful dry garden in England by a woman named Beth Chatto, here are some plants for the dry garden http://www.bethchatto.co.uk/dlp.html
(Um, it’s gardening time here in Sweden but it’s raining and I have two holes in my boots so… that’s why I’m rambling on)