Our Greek Garden's What, Why and How

Our Greek Garden’s What, Why and How

Plan 2

Anestis begins clearing

Australian Gardens

An Australian house is usually single story and set in the middle of a house block of land. Because of the size of this spread-out house and its placing there is usually a small amount of garden all around it. Australian gardens, like those in England and America, usually use the garden to enhance the house. So gardeners plant trees, flowers and bushes, and perhaps ponds and pergolas. There is often space for a lawn where the children can play. 

 Plus there are many public gardens where again aesthetics is important, and flowers are used almost like paintings.

(Gardens of many immigrants from Asia and the Mediterranean however are often different, as the garden, rather than being devoted to flowers, is often given over to fruit trees and vegetables.)

The Typical Lemian-Town Garden

In most Greek towns a house is several stories high and set right on the roadway. There is usually no house-garden, and folk keep plants in pots on balconies, while vegetables are grown outside town in an allotment.

But Every Garden is Unique

Our Greek house is three stories high and set right up against two roads. This placing - where you step out of the door onto the road - is typical. However what this place gives us is far more garden space if we wanted it, and even more than one would have in a typical Australian house and gardens set-up where the house takes up most of the garden space. 

We were happy to have so much land around the house, and we have now fully developed every corner to give us all the aspects of a garden that we wanted.

The What and Why of Our Lemnos Garden

         What did we want?           And Why did we want this?

The Basics: sitting areas, amenities area, car parking area

Plus.....

We like entertaining at home, so we wanted a number of pleasant sitting places. I like drying my clothes in the sun rather than in a drying cabinet (especially when there is plenty of sunshine), and we preferred to park the car in the property (rather than on the road as so many have to in Myrina).

Vegs and fruit areas

Even the White House has a vegetable garden!

And as we like cooking for ourselves and others we wanted a good vegetable garden and some fruit trees.

How we Achieved our Lemian Garden

The Plan

Along the way I found that the original grand scheme (see blog 23) needed to be adjusted, to accommodate various practical needs. For instance, our driveway was steep and we needed to be able to turn at the top. Plus we wanted a shaded carport for summer. Plus the first plan had not included a place to put the rotary hoist that came from Australia.                       

And, looking over my original design, I changed the pathways in the hot garden area to be more informal, limiting straight lines to the vegetable and herb gardens. I had hoped for the same informality along the back wall in the shade garden however once our helper, Anestis overseen by my husband got going, the stonewall ended up with straight lines.

Materials and Workers

 

I often found that I had to work with the conflicting wishes of all of those involved, plus I learnt how to deal with necessary limits of space and materials, and so compromises of many kinds were made.

Often revisions were needed in a hurry, and were drawn on scraps of paper found in a hotel room, or in the kitchen, on memo pads supplied by hard-wear shops, or in my diary, on planes as we flew back and forth to Australia.