It is sometimes hard to find time to work on my own place when I am always working on body corporate client’s gardens. Recently I put my head down and tidied up the left side of my house.
Being such a narrow space, I needed to put in some thought in terms of maintaining good access to the backyard, and which plants would be workable for the area.
In the end, I used 600mm x 400mm steppers in two different shades of grey surrounded by grey gravel. I also chose bamboo and trees with very narrow upright growing habits, as well as a flowering purple wreath vine to cover the front downpipe.
Once you have a clear idea of what you want to do with a space, it’s amazing what you can achieve with a few spare hours here and there.
Common Ground have just finished designing and installing a garden in the courtyard of a body corporate property in New Farm.
Part of the fun of this job is that we get to work with some beautiful plants, and the dwarf agapanthus know as Lilibet is one such plant. We are using it as mass planted border for the front of the client’s garden bed.
The Lilibet has a striking bicolour flower, and is a great choice for narrow areas, or if you can’t decide between white and blue agapanthus.
Job done. The Lilibet form a border along the front of the garden.
Overall, the garden came together relatively smoothly, and I can’t wait to see the plants fill out the space over the next year or so. I also can’t wait to see the Lilibet put on a mass of its beautiful flowers.
Lastly, our client, Susie, was kind enough to bake some Anzac biscuits for us while we were working on her garden, and they were delicious. Thank you Susie!
Susie’s Anzac biscuits. Yum!
Feedback from client
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to thank you guys before you left on Friday-an amazing job and I’m thrilled to bits with it. It already looks great and the bit of rain sprinkles yesterday made it look even perkier. You and Paul put in such a hard heavy days work – much appreciated.”
Before – heavily soiled ceramic tiles badly in need of a deep clean.
Last week we completed a clean-up of a large courtyard at the rear of a New Farm body corporate complex. We hard pruned the trees, removed weeds from the garden beds and pressure washed the tiles.
After removing all the green waste from site we moved onto the pressure washing of the ceramic courtyard tiles, and the results were amazing.
In-progress.After proper prep work years of ground indirt just melts away.
There had been a lot of leaf litter sitting on the tiles, so I knew that the staining would be difficult to lift. I decided to call in a new heavy duty tile cleaner to apply ahead of the pressure washing.
The tiles came up a treat, and I always enjoy seeing the transformation when working on pressure washing jobs like this.
Please Contact Us today if you have internal or external tiles that are in need of intensive cleaning.
Before – note the burnt patches on the temple grass in the foreground of this picture.
Common Ground Property Services recently completed a garden make over at a body corporate complex on Macquarie St, Teneriffe.
The project involved stripping out most of the existing plants from the four large garden beds at the front of the complex, creating just over 1,500 kg of green waste! The plants had not been thinned out of late, and consequently the gardens had lost the symmetry of the original design. Additionally, the temple grass around the edge of the garden beds had suffered because of attention from the local dog population. The normally vibrant green temple grass was covered in large burnt patches, and had to be removed.
After – one of the four garden beds that was spruced-up at a Teneriffe body corporate complex.
The client brief was simple – keep it low maintenance. So we put in a sparely planted combination of cordylines and oleanders for colour and height, which we decided to interplant with green liriopes to fill the gaps. These plants were then surrounded by a border of stripey white grass clumps. All of these plants are very hardy, and fit the ‘low maintenance’ tag perfectly.
Just after the project was completed, the area was hit with a long overdue downpour, which should help the plants establish themselves in no time.
If you would like to discuss ideas for a spruce-up the gardens at your body corporate complex, please Contact Us at Common Ground Property Services today.
Fresh mulch and new plants revive a once tired common area garden bed in Auchenflower.
It is always great to see tired and overgrown common area garden beds brought back to life. However, it takes a lot of hardwork and planning to whip neglected gardens into shape.
At Common Ground Property Services we follow a four step strategy.
1. Clutter Clearing. We start by thinning out overgrown plants, and removing dead/low hanging branches, weeds and inappropriate/under-performing plants.
2. New Plantings. We then plant out new plants in-line with client requirements. Typically the client brief will include the need for a variety of water wise plants of differing heights and leaf structures. Most commonly we are asked to included some kind of colourful flowering shrub.
This body corporate courtyard in New Farm was converted from a bare garden bed into an inviting space, with the addition of some liriopes, cordylines and philodendrons.
3. Mulching. Next, spreading a thick layer of mulch around the new plants helps to keep them healthy, and also provides a great backdrop to really make them stand-out. Where possible, we also recommend irrigating new gardens to help them perform well.
4. Follow-up. Lastly, as most of our jobs are for existing clients, we can keep an eye on the new gardens on our regular garden maintenance visits and stay on top of pruning and feeding requirements.
Sometimes it is hard to know where to start when tackling a new garden project. Which is why I find it helpful to break big projects into smaller manageable tasks. The end result is always worth the effort.
With Common Ground Property Services busier than ever, it has been hard to find the time to work on my own garden lately. But with the long weekend upon us, I decided to bite the bullet and mow my lawn, plant out my herb garden and restart my worm farm.
These jobs only took a couple of hours, and now we are ready to reap the benefits of fresh herbs, veggies and fruit, and we’ll be able to keep the plants well fed with worm castings and ‘worm juice’ – a liquid gold fertilizer. In Brisbane, April is the perfect time to plant a range of plants for the veggie patch, now that the sun is losing some of its punch and the nights are cooling down (which helps to control many pests that are keen to dine out on your herbs and veggies).
As I only work with a small veggie patch, I tend to plant out high yielding plants, many of which can be ‘grazed’ for a few leaves each day or will provide multiple crops. I also stick with plants that I know are easy to grow and that I will definitely use in the kitchen. For example, this season I have planted kale, spinach, bok choi, chilies, cherry tomatoes, coriander, garlic chives and sweet basil, as well as passionfruit and red papaya. I have also planted a herb called brahmi, which is apparently good for memory.
With work now expected to slow down for the winter months, I’m looking forward to getting more gardening jobs done around home on the weekends.
I would encourage everyone to get out and plant some herbs or veggies at this time of year. Even if you start small and only put in a few plants, the health benefits and satisfaction you get from growing your own food are undeniable!
We recently came across this young carpet python (see image) in a car park at a Nundah body corporate complex.
Our staff have been coming across lots of pythons and other snakes at properties around Brisbane, and our clients have also been reporting a high number snake sightings in and around their common area gardens.
Snakes are a lot more prevalent at this time of year as things start to warm up, but I have never seen as many as I’ve come across over the past two months.
This high number of snake encounters certainly helps keep us on our toes, but it also reminded me of a comment our insurance broker made a few years ago. He jokingly referred to mower men as ‘snake chasers’. At the time I didn’t think this was a fair description of what we did, but lately I’ve started to feel he may have been onto something.
At any rate, keep a close eye out if you are working in your common area gardens (or even on your balcony). We are definitely being a lot more cautious of late.
Garth and Colin from Common Ground with former Queensland Origin star Billy Moore.
The Common Ground Property Services team attended the State of Origin decider at Suncorp Stadium on 8th July, and as we are all Maroon supporters, had a fantastic night.
It was great to be amongst the record 52,500 fans that were lucky enough to see Queensland win the series with a 52 to 6 victory over New South Wales. People often say that one-sided games are boring to watch, but the atmosphere at the ground was incredible and I didn’t notice any Queensland fans leaving early.
It was a great team-building night for our small company and hopefully one that will become an annual event.
Work in progress. High pressure cleaning to remove black mould at a Taringa body corporate.
Black mould on concrete, tiles and pavers in the common areas of body corporate complexes represents a significant slip hazard to residents and visitors alike.
Periodic high-pressure cleaning is an excellent way for body corporate committees to ensure that common areas are kept free of slip hazards.
Common Ground Property Services recently completed high-pressure cleaning of paved and concrete areas at a body corporate complex in Taringa. Given that the areas had not been cleaned for many years, we were very happy with the results we achieved. One of the paved areas, in particular, came up looking like new!
Finished look. This paved area looks like new after having the slippery black mould removed.
Common Ground Property Services have all the high-pressure cleaning equipment and expertise to remove potential slip hazards from any property (body corporate, commercial or domestic) large or small.
Bush turkeys are notoriously hard to dislodge once they find a suitable location for their nest. However there is a way that body corporate committees can deter them from scratching in particular areas of their gardens.
Scrub turkeys (or bush turkeys as they are commonly known as) can remodel entire gardens, as male birds relentlessly scratch up leaves and mulch to create their impressive nests. The birds can scratch large piles of garden deadfall across roads and driveways without leaving a single leaf behind. Even in the face of urban dangers such as dogs and angry body corporate committee members, they show amazing tenacity.
Their tenacity has been rewarded with an explosion in their numbers in South East Queensland in recent years. The bush turkey also has an extremely important role with their ability to pollinate seeds, and as such are a protected species. Even though it is possible to move their nests once the nesting season is over, this is not a guarantee that the same turkey won’t return to build another nest in the same location next season.
So how can body corporates share their gardens with the bush turkey?
One method we have found to be highly successful in stopping the turkey’s scratching behaviour in common area gardens involves putting down netting, bringing in a number of large bush rocks and planting out the area where they had their nest.
This area was converted into a garden bed after the resident bush turkey was evicted.
We recently completed such a project at an Ashgrove body corporate property where a turkey was creating havoc in the front garden. The turkey gave up scratching in the area in which we put the netting after a couple of weeks and once we were sure that he had moved on we brought in the rocks and plants.
Why not give this relatively cost-effective method a try if you have a particular part of the garden that you’d like to keep bush turkey free?
