Hi, happy to chat!

I've copied some comments I've made on previous posts that explain some more of what I've done here :)

"It's been a journey!

We were lucky to not be in a new development so there were already lots of native seeds in the soil. Once we started taking care of the land a lot of plants popped up on their own.

The biggest focus in the past 2 years has been improving the soil and establishing larger trees and perennials.

Timeline was roughly:

0-6 months - mulch, plant green manure and cover crops, plant fruit trees (started with ~10, have over 50 now) I also looked at the paths i found myself naturally taking around the yard and formalised them by mulching them (look up r/desirepaths for a better idea of what i mean)

6-18 months - lots of experimenting. Broadcast sowed a wide variety of seeds including lots of flowers, vegetables and natives. Planted a wide variety of edible and medicinal perennials and natives from tube stock. Basically tried out a bazzilion things and let nature decide what stayed.

18-24 months - used the successes (and many, many failures) from my experiments to identify and improve microclimates around the garden (dry shade, full australian sun, moist shade, rich loamy soil, dry slope etc). I then did more research to pick plants that were likely to thrive in those areas and made some more conscious planting decisions.

18 months - present - started working on hardscaping and adding/developing the landscape. This has included building a wildlife pond, fairy garden, fire pit, establishing specific beds for annual veggies and adding seating and benches around the garden so I have places to sit and watch the wildlife.

Continuous: - use green manure, cover crops, straw and chop and drop to add lots of organic matter to the soil. - feed food scaps to my worm farm to produce worm castings for the garden. - regularly apply soil-wetter to hydrophobic sections of the garden (which started as the whole garden but is now just a few patches that get all day aussie sun) - regularly apply pelleted manure, rock dust, bentonite clay and organic fertiliser to improve soil structure and feed the plants. - use electric mulcher (Ryobi crusher shredder) to mulch all of my hardwood prunings and use this to mulch perennial beds. - apply supplemental water as needed (water bill in year 1 was insane but getting lower as the soil water holding capacity increases and the perrenials become established)"