We were busy little bees over the weekend, off to a late start on Saturday but we got there in the end and with plenty of sunlight left.

I have been planning for and looking forward to this trip all week. Yup. Me ~ hanging to go to the garden and hardware store, who'd have thunk it?

Bunnings

Bunnings is the biggest Home and Hardware store/warehouse in Australia. Since we're familiar with it and the local one isn't too far from home we decided we'd start there.

In terms of Bunnings stores the one near us is a baby, which meant it had most of the basics but not much of anything else.

They did have most of the things we were after. I think In our case it being a small store worked in our favor because if there were more plants to choose from I know we would have come home with more.

As it was I feel we may have gone overboard for our trial run.

Walking towards the back of the plant section I found the Australian Native plants

If I can use an Australian Native plant for one of my core guild needs I will. I just feel our native birds will enjoy them better? Am I wrong here? lol

The 'Pacific Reef' looks like it could be a great pollinators and if it spreads across the ground like thyme, it could also be a suppressor.

This amazing plant caught my eye with it's big bold lettuce like bloom.

It didn't have a tag on it so I don't know what it is. Do you know what it is?

These flowers are so bright and vibrant it helped bring my mood up in an instant. I didn't know anything about it though and my plant knowledge isn't that good.

On to the business end of the shopping..

My Selection

The more I research gardening, the more I fall in love with plants.

Every day since I embarked on this journey I have learned something new and I feel like I'm starting to connect the dots in terms of companion planting and which plants bring what to the soil and the ecosystem.

A flower isn't just a flower, a weed isn't just a weed, it's all connected. We just need to find the harmonious connection.

(Group shot! You can see my marigolds in this picture.)

With companion planting and the guild system in mind, I selected plants I felt would be compatible with Tomatoes and Eggplants as they are the main ones we want to grow.

(Basil, two types of Tomatoes and Beans at the back.)

(Eggplants!)

(We bought two types of lettuce but you can only see the cos lettuce in this picture. We also bought chives but you can only see the tops of it.)

(Last minute random puchase - capsicum)

(And when we couldn't find the plant we wanted we bought seeds.)

Companion Bag Planting

(One of the many reference guides I use to figure out which plants work well with what.) Source

The original idea was to begin with maybe 1 to 2 bags seeing that we were trialling the bag planting idea, but when we got there we went a little plant crazy and had to buy 4 bags of potting mix instead.

Really, we needed to buy 6 to give some of these plants room to grow...

As much planning as I did in figuring out which plants go together in which bag, on the day I had to redo my plan to accommodate the capsicum impulse buy, and the fact that I thought I had two bean plants but I only had one..

Here is my new companion planting layout.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2!
I'll explain my plant companions in that post, show you guys some progress shots and some of the seeds I planted.

❤ Arly