HANNAH: I love our garden.
It's close to the city
and it has some of the most sunny and stunning views imaginable,
but it does come with a few issues.
In particular, it is far from flat.
Gardening on a slope is generally a bit harder.
Everything takes longer and is more expensive.
Now, in our garden, ideally would have loved
to terrace everything with beautiful stonework
to stop water shooting off down the slope
and taking the nutrients with it.
Unfortunately, our dreams and our budget didn't quite line up,
so in the process of being a bit more creative,
we found an affordable solution,
which is the heat-treated recycled pallet.
We've built some large earth banks
with an angle of approximately 30 degrees.
We've then placed the pallets directly into the slope
to stabilise it
and create instant structure that we can plant into straightaway.
They've worked so well for our slope.
They've helped all these plants get established, with water and nutrient
being held higher in the slope in all these nooks and crannies,
and today, I'm gonna show you how you can do it as well
in your own steep garden.
Now, the first thing you need to do
when you're going to build your pallet bank
is find your pallet.
We find ours from local tip shops, warehouse sites or building sites.
Importantly, when we choose them, we're making sure
they all have a really good little stamp which says 'HT'.
That stands for 'heat-treated' pallets.
It means there's no nasty chemicals in this,
which means that your garden won't have any nasty chemicals in it too.
This is where we're gonna put our
demonstration pallet garden today.
And as you can see,
we've prepped the site to make sure
it's ready for the pallet
to be nestled into the slope.
Importantly, we've chipped off the top layer of the grass,
so there's not a thick grass mat there
that can just spring up between the pallets
and be impossible to weed later on.
With the ground nice and clear,
it's now time to secure that pallet in place.
These timber pegs do a fantastic job of holding the pallet on the slope
to make sure it doesn't slide away.
The other ace thing about them
is that they can just rot in place, like the pallet,
and by that stage, the plant's roots have kicked in,
and they're holding the slope together instead of the pallet.
Now, once that soil is nice and packed into the pallet,
it's time for some of this mulchy compost goodness.
Okey-dokey.
Now we're up to the fun bit where we get to actually plant something.
Today, we've got these beautiful native creeping boobialla plants,
and these are fantastic choice for this pallet garden
because they're really hardy.
They don't need much love.
The other awesome bonus about them
is that their foliage will eventually drape down like one big blanket
and smother that pallet so you don't even see it.
So, let's get started.
In 12 months' time, that small pallet garden will start to look like this,
and when it flowers, the white or pink flowers are so gorgeous.
Overall, working with pallets on our steep slope
has been enormously helpful for us,
and it might be too for you.