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Hi All.
I need some advice for what to plant in my garden beds along the southern part of my Northern fence. The catch-22 I have is in in Summer, the suns angle means the plants will pretty much get full sun. But in Winter, when the sun's angle means it will be obstructed by our 2m boundary fence and the plants will effectively get no Sun light.
I have built a raised garden bed and also have a garden bed just below the deck line.
We're currently in October (so mid spring), and I've done some measurements from the top of the bed to the height at with there is contact with sun light. You can see from the photos below for the raised garden bed, this is around 50cm and for the lower part, this would be around 1.5m in height. Of course in winter, this will be much higher.
In terms of width of space available for planting, the thinner part of the raised garden bed is around 35cm, and the wider part around 42cm (it starts of thinner and gets wider as you go along as the fence line is at a slight angle to the deck. The lower part is around 36cm.
On the lower part, I was hoping to put something taller, that would grow to around 2m to cover the height of the fence and look good against the grey. I was initially thinking Lilly Pilly, I love the mix of colour of the green and reddish leaves. But am worried it will die in winter (I was also told the space is too thin for Lilly Pilly - though I'm happy for it to grow over the deck a little). And then I was also thinking of something shorter, perhaps some tall grasses or something, to plant in between the taller plants to create some layering.
I'm also very open to the idea of everygreen fruit trees, such as citrus, etc (if they can tolerate the position)
On the raised garden bed, I'm really unsure of what to plant there. I was considering something with a bit of utility, such as blueberry or maybe some other veges ... but not sure how good these will tolerate no sun in winter. Primary goal though is aesthetics, so nothing disidous, as it needs to look good in winter too. I'm hoping also for something that will grow up to 1m tall to again create that backdrop against the grey fence. I'm also not averse to attaching a wire frame of sorts to the fence posts for the plants to grow up against.
I believe the soil type for the lower deck is a sandy loam (based on my non-expert analysis of sand in a glass bottle with water!). I haven't yet checked the pH. The raised bed I've actually layered the bottom with hard matter, branches, etc. Someone told me about hugelkultur, so I looked into it and thought I'd recycle the plants and trees I cut down before. On top of this, I will add some of the sandy loam soil I dig out from elsewhere, and then I'll top the last 1/3rd with organic matter soil (and add organic matter soil to the top 15cm of the lower bed).
Would love some assistance here.
Thanks
Itai
An update on my garden almost 3.5 years later. The plants grew very well. Though I ended up removing the Mona Lavender because every time they dropped a branch or a leaf, it started growing on it's own, plus also it kept getting eaten by something and just did not look visually appealing. It also looked messy with the size of the plants and close together and differing heights. So I removed them and left the gapped look which was nicer.
Also, the Camelia's are still there, but they're pretty much the same size ... they never really grew bigger. But they do give nice flowers once a year.
The Lilly Pilly's are next level ... they grew to around 4-5m tall and very bushy. I had to shorten the height a bit as they didn't look too nice being that tall relative to everything else.
The plants are a little bare here because I recently gave them a shave with the $199 Ryobi Hedge Trimmer, ready to bush out for spring. BTW, I got this to replace the $99 Ryobi hedge trimmer and the difference is chalk and cheese. I would not get the $99 one again, but definitely this new one!
