Second Garden Review : Weed Annihilation (Reconstruction)

Chelsea's Garden

This past month I've been working on Chelsea's Garden in 82 Alexandra Street, St Kilda East.

What I've done is basically the reconstruction of the garden by annihilating or just maintaining the weeds and it is so frustrating on knowing the fact that it's not actually our weeds!

This is what I meant (see the picture below):

This is a picture of their pathway to the garden that I pruned two weeks ago (before it was absolutely impassible, so I think I did a pretty good job there :D). Notice that the Hedera helix actually belongs to the neighbor as it crawls from the other side of the fence, not only that on the back of the garden some Ipomoea indica also crawls in and have even reached the grass!

Here's what I think: gardening is actually a community job! If residents wanted a good atmosphere for their place, they also need a good corporation between each others in handling their plants since it contributed the most on the environment factor. If one garden look amazing with high maintenance, but the other are not taken care, at all. Sooner or later those unmaintained garden will dominate the good garden and every garden will look disastrous. I'm clearly not saying that everyone should have a high maintainable for their garden, but at least take care of the weeds ! After all weeds like Hedera helix tend to have a 10x faster growth rate then most garden plants.

Other than that on my reconstruction, I also cleared up a lot of spaces that was dominated by Weeds.

Into this ....

Make the picnic table usable again....

Into this ....

Into this ....

Results =

And finally up-rooted this dead(at least I think it's dead) tree monsters on the front garden!

Into this ....

Henceforth a lot of spaces for reconstruction \(^^)/

and the end of my third garden review, thanks for reading

- Justin H Kusnandar

First Garden Review: Edinburgh Gardens

Edinburgh Gardens

The Edinburgh Gardens dates back from the year 1872 and receive it's name from the Duke of Edinburgh. It's beautiful and also huge as it has 8.9 meter square area per person based on the 2001 census, which is actually above the average of the world's garden. This make the garden suitable for outdoors activities such as:

- Playing Catch

- Cycling

- Picnic

- Dog Walking

- Even music bands come along to practice!

The garden also have beautiful flower beds for sightseeing, with a lot of bench and some pavilions to enjoy, they are brilliantly placed as they are at the edges of the garden which doesn't disturb places for outdoor activities.

Garden beds, 8/10 for fabulous view!

The Edinburgh Gardens is pretty much a wonderful public place to be visited, but however I would be lying if I said it was perfect and it does not have any problems at all...

The fact is that there are 3 main problems currently happening for this garden:

1)Main Problem: The water restriction because of the drought in the past 10 years, could cause the flower beds to be removed x_x!!!!

2) Budget Constriction: Since it is a non- profitable garden (free to use), the garden relies on fund from the government and management of Yarra

3) Bicycle usage, does NOT blend well with dog walking: A lot of problems from dog breeders has been issued that their dogs had an accident as they got crashed by the bicycles, causing serious injury or maybe.. dead O.o!

Solutions :

1) They are currently working on a Raingarden and ponds to conserve water for irrigation source which could be finished in a short 4 months. This could save the garden beds ! \(^^)/

2) Errr.. Nothing much they could do with it, hopefully grateful resident will donate for this cause as they need the funds for a better irrigation system and etc

3) This is actually my suggestion for the good of dogs:

a) Put a warning side on tracks like "beware of bicycles" near the tracks

b) Make a rule: for safety issues - dogs need to be leashed

c) Make another rule: Cycling must remain on tracks

That way it should lower the risk of accidents !

That's all for this week review,

thanks for reading and remember to keep garden clean as a form of appreciation

There are trash bins you know !

Regards - Justin H Kusnandar

Weed Annihilation ?

Name: Justin Howard Kusnandar

Position: Melbourne University Student, Studying Horticulture

*don't feel like doing that "Hi my name is .... " and all that cra.....*ehm* nonsense.

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O.K so... Weed Annihilation.

Ummm what......? Isn't that a little harsh ??

Well 'Weed Annihilation' is actually referring to my current part time job, which is basically to eradicate the weeds on their backyard since it just massively invaded the land leaving no area to plant.

Weeds are basically misplaced plants after all, There are a lot of use full weeds such as Agonis flexuosa and ornamental ones like crocosmia xcrocosmiiflora, they just tend to be invasive that's all :D

So yeah, the weeds I wanted to annihilate are currently the super annoying ones (that are extremely invasive) such as Urtica diocia and Hedera helix (my worst enemy in pruning!!).

Which is why this blog is called Weed Annihilation (\(O,...,o )/)!