New Mediterranean Garden January 2012

I am going to turn this:

into this:

Actually, no I'm not. But the picture did inspire me, as does the New Year, to do something about my ramshackle former vegetable garden and make it habitable for something other than snakes and bees.

Here is my plan:

For this project I will need:

• Lots of white gravel
• Weed mat for under the white gravel so weeds don't grow though the gaps in the gravel. Newspaper doesn't work, even lots of it because it breaks down. I learned this the hard way. 
• 5-6 x French Lavender, "Grosso" or "Provence", which I will buy from Honeysuckle Cottage Nursery
• Red geraniums. I already have terracotta pots to put them in. 
• Various varieties of thyme, also to be bought from HCN, so I can plant a thyme carpet that will look like this:

9thymelawn.jpg

sequoiagardens.wordpress.com

• 
  
• A seat. I would like a Lutyens seat like this:
• A seat. I would like a Lutyens seat like this:
• 
  

http://www.andrewcrace.com/garden-furniture/garden-seats/five-seater-patio-benches/large-lutyens-seat.htm

But I will have to wait a bit and use my existing seats for the time being:

 One day I would also like a little fountain.

Now I am going to weed the area and transplant the star jasmine from one part of the garden to my new garden. I would like to plant a gardenia in the new garden, but the garden will have to survive on rain water pretty much and gardenias love lots of water, so I will just spray gardenia spray around the kitchen and pretend the scent is wafting in from the garden.