A little patch of peace

Welcome to my world for the next three years – a partly demolished house (who needs walls and floors?), an overgrown backyard with a wonky 50-year-old Hills Hoist and a half dug-up driveway. It looks like a building site, because that’s what it is, and we’re living amongst it.

Anyone who has embarked on a major renovation knows about the chaos you live in – the dust, dirt and the general, well, ugliness. Forget about an outside entertaining area; you can’t spend precious time gardening when there are walls to frame up or cabinetry to build.

Unless you just love growing beautiful things like I do.

Just before we started our rebuild 15 months ago, we built a big, raised garden bed along the fence of our little front yard. It had two purposes – one, it was a place to put soil that had to be dug out, and two, it gave me a garden space.

Our front yard gradually became a little haven, a patch of peace and greenery amid the chaos that happened as we demolished the front rooms of our house. I grew vegetables and planted my beloved café latte dahlias in the raised garden bed. Then I created a little garden alongside and planted three olive trees that we got off our local marketplace site.

On one side of the driveway I espaliered lemon and lime trees, with the aim of creating a wall of green on the neighbour’s brick garage wall. We put big planters either side of the front door and planted them with gorgeous hydrangeas. What colour! What beauty! Then, last week, I made a little semi-circular garden in front of the veranda and filled it with pretty lavender and annuals. I didn’t spend a lot of time doing this, just a few hours here and there. Such a joy!

While we work on rebuilding front of our house, this little garden is a place for me to take time out every now and then to pull out a few weeds, harvest a tomato or herbs for dinner, and check on the growth of a new plant. At the end of the day, we can sit on the veranda with a drink, our backs to the chaos behind us, and look out at the greenery. We can bring around the barbie and spend time with friends and family, here in our little patch of peace, that seems a world away from the renovation chaos. It’s a place to breathe.