I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions. Generally when I resolve to make a change I do it at the time. However, with New Year's resolutions being talked about so much I can't help but think about whether there are any goals I'd like to achieve. 
My front garden has been on my mind a lot of late. When we first bought the house it was lawn with a small garden bed at the top and an ash tree to one side of the lawn. The ground is sloped towards the road and consists of clay and rubble from the house build. It's open to the full force of all the weather. In summer it gets baked with cracks running through it and when rain finally comes it just runs off into the road. The rain does eventually sink in to the clay, until it's water logged, then it goes back to running off. The neighbours trees to one side offer a little protection from Adelaide’s near constant winds, but from the other direction the winds just tear straight across.
The top picture is from Google Maps as I don't have any before photos.
Before we started trying to grow our own food we toyed with the idea of putting fake lawn across the front. The thought almost horrifies me now! What we ended up doing initially, though, was extending the garden bed a bit more before changing our minds and taking out most of the lawn leaving just pathways. If I thought the soil on the back was bad I was in for a huge shock trying to grow anything where that lawn once was! A lot of things have died trying to grow here and I'd almost reached the point of giving up on anything more than Aloe Vera and Mediterranean herbs there. Yet slowly things have started to take and after seeing what Malcolm 
The garden is open plan with a driveway either side. We can't really afford to fence it in to gain privacy and it wouldn't really be in keeping with the rest of the houses on the road. I also don't want it to feel like we're blocking ourselves off from our neighbours. However, we also have big windows across the front, one of which is a bedroom window, so I'd like to get a bit of privacy back without having the blinds down permanently. I'm thinking of achieving this with a row of small trees. I have two olive saplings which are growing slowly and I'm thinking of adding a couple of finger limes which are an Australian native.
The olive trees.
I already have a South Australian Sweet Appleberry thriving next to where one tree would go and it could then climb that tree.
Sweet Appleberry
Due to time constraints, the only thing I've really done to try and improve the soil has been mulching. In order to not have it carried off by the strong winds I went for a heavy woodchip, however, this is slow to break down. So I've decided I'm going to try improving the soil, section at a time, by digging in compost and manure and making sure the area stays damp before I plant in it. I've started an area near the front door which should be easily enough accessed for me to keep on top of it.
This area near the front door is part of a small area that actually gets a lot of shade year round. A good place to start improving the soil.
I want to start getting denser planting to help with cooling and to protect the soil, but I also want to be able to access everything, so I'll need to plan paths out. I haven't made any concrete decisions in that regard, but I have the feeling they'll most likely form organically around what is already there. One of Malcolm's posts has got me thinking how I can best layer things. Sadly, thinking is about as far as I've got so far...
So my hope is that by the end of this year the photo I take of the front garden will have more plants and less ground showing!
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