The beginning

This journal begins with me digging up the acanthus. I couldn't bear the way it looked anymore, the snails ( or slugs, I never see the little fiends so I don't know which it is) have had their way with it so that the leaves were more hole than leaf. The strange thing is that the acanthus were practically the only flowers growing in the garden of this house when we bought it just over a year ago, and they were never eaten then. They sprang up everywhere (acanthus grow from tubers) and they continue to reappear, so I'm not really worried about them disappearing for good.

But with Christmas approaching I decided to put something else in the place of the worst affected plant, so I planted some plumbago and delphiniums. The reason for this is that this part of the garden is the "blue flower bed" (so really the acanthus shouldn't be there, since it's not blue, more cream and purplish-grey). Then my mother told me that snails love plumbago too.

In this journal I'll talk more about the house and the garden, but a brief history - the house is on Sydney's North Shore, it was built ca. 1912 and it's called "Sandringham". It was built by a builder who lived two doors down, Richard Blundell. I haven't found out much about him yet. When we bought it the garden had really nothing except grass, overgrown ficus and privet (now removed), and two ancient camellias - one is as old as the house and as tall (2 storeys). So there was no historic garden to speak of. We have tried to create one, with Gertrude Jekyll and Edna Walling as our guides. More of that later.