Rehabilitation....Restoration?

A few weeks before we went away, I wrote a post about the sad state of a garden bed in the front yard. To me, it was certainly a sad state of affairs and the building development next door was totally to blame. For some reason, they had  built the 7 houses and then announced that they would have to come on to our property to dig trenches for the storm water drains...hello? In that post I wrote about how we gave them permission but that we expected the least disruption possible and any damage to our property would be repaired and gardens restored.

The temporary fence was moved yet another 35 CM or so into our property... So nearly a metre of our property is fenced off...

In this photo, the fence is resting against our house on the western side...and there was a large heap of dirt against it... This situation affected about 2/3 of our property line. The men working on this project removed my garden edging blocks so they could get the digger into next door....

They finished this work in just over a week...and this is the garden bed after that work was completed.

The shrubs near the front fence were untouched, the pentas and the large geranium were knocked about a bit but had survived. The topsoil had been taken away as had about a square metre of the end of the bed. My 'marmalade plant' (streptosolen jamasonii) was battered but there was still some of the plant remaining. My poker plant didn't survive. 

Guess who got a phone call from me? Yep! Brad the Project Manager. He promised that it would be put right and that plants would be replaced. As we were going away, he suggested that I give him a list of the plants when I returned.

The next photo shows the 'marmalade' plant before work started....

. 

This photo of the same plant was taken last spring...

So let's fast forward to last week when we arrived home...

Looking towards the front garden bed that had been wrecked...a wooden fence has been built and turf has been laid.

My dear neighbour watered the turf each day...and I have been doing that as well...just for the novelty. 

Generally we don't waste water on our lawn...it survives on rainfall...

The edging has been restored and the missing section of the garden has been replacd with new topsoil. Now is there something wrong in this next photo?

That mulch is stacked up against the fence... A no no in a termite prone area such as Brisbane. 

Talking of termites...that black box in the photo is a termite monitor box. It is a brand new one which has been paid for by the developers of next door. Their subcontractors dug up the old one and threw it away as it was no where to be seen when we came home...even digging into the mulch brought up zilch. This photo also shows how empty the garden bed is...so Brad has a list of the 3 plants I expect to be replaced. My beautiful marmalade plant was a victim; under the assumption that it may have got covered with soil, I even dug into the mulch and topsoil to see if I could find it...but no luck. 

The croton survived...and the Brunfelsia...

The geranium was fine when we left home on March 18...but it's gone now!

I  have a number of new plants that I've grown from cuttings which I could use to fill in the gaps. But I'm resisting that urge to replant straight away, and will wait for the replacements. (I so wish I had have struck some cuttings from the Marmalade bush) :-)