Robyn, Nusa Lemobongan writes: I enjoy your Bali Advertiser column, although we don’t get every issue; nobody here distributes it, so we rely on either being over on the mainland or having someone else get us a copy. Our lawn is Japanese couch, down three years now, with it being mainly healthy. “Something” has taken up residence and is eating the root system (or so it seems). The affected area is spongy to walk on, with the grass coming away in your hand when you tug gently. The affected area is being colonised by soft plants, which I am manually removing.
There are areas of tiny pellets of what looks like soil, throughout the affected area, and I certainly see tiny ants wandering around. The commercial treatments are ridiculously expensive given the area I need to treat. Is it ants, or might it be something else, and what do you suggest?
I doubt that your problem is ants Robyn as they do not usually attack root systems. It sounds more like something in the cockchafer family. Dig down into the affected soil some 5-6 cm. If you find a white grub curled up with a darker brown head it is cockchafers, which do eat roots. The other possibility is nematodes which have the same result and require much the same treatment.
Whatever it is, stay away from the strong, expensive chemicals. Go to (or phone order from) the Neem Products shop next to Sunrise School in Kerobokan and buy pure Neem Oil. Dilute this with water at twice the recommended rate (ie: 150ml per liter) and flood your lawn with this. If it is a large area buy in the quantity you need (One liter is below Rp100.000). Apply to the entire grassed area as it takes some time for the symptoms to appear after the infestation.
Let me know how it is going in the event that I may have to recommend another treatment.
Hello, my name is Nikolay. I contact you as a high-class specialist in landscape design. At the moment I am building a Japanese restaurant in Bali, and I need help in building a small Japanese garden with trees, wells and so on. I really need to meet with you for a discussion.
Thank you for the compliment Nikolay, and yes, we must meet to discuss the matter further as I would need to see the area and where the garden is to be located. For the benefit of my readers, I would like to make some general observations about traditional Japanese gardens. The keynote is simplicity – almost to the point of starkness. Grassed spaces are rarely, if ever, used.
Raked gravel, or better still raked small white stones are used to cover ‘open’ areas. The really pernickety go to the trouble of searching out and selecting small white pebbles of much the same size and shape. The raking of the stones in itself can become an art form. It is usually raked according to a design. It may be swirls, or geometric patterns but it is never simply a straightforward raking.
There is usually just one focal point to the garden. This may be a well, a stone or bronze lantern, a perfectly pruned and shaped small tree (or even a magnificent bonsai placed on a simple plinth), a single well-shaped, mossy boulder, a beautiful pot, a piece of superb statuary; I have seen here a number of pieces of driftwood or otherwise naturally sculpted wood, which would serve such a purpose. Flowering plants are almost never used for their blossoming. Of course, most plants do blossom – it is part of their reproductive cycle – but in a Japanese garden the flowers are small and insignificant. They may well be chosen for their perfume however.
Other plantings are chosen for their shapes, ie: small and mounded, size and color of leaf, interesting shapes, twisted limbs (may be helped by wiring when young a la bonsai), etc. Given that flowering is not important, the shades of green found and their positioning is a matter of long and judicious thought. All of this must subtly but surely lead the eye to the focal point, which must be a piece of high art (not necessarily vastly expensive).
Such a garden is best viewed a little from above. For a restaurant, I would plan on having an elevated entrance from where the entire garden may be viewed (it does not have to be big to be perfect) before they enter the restaurant proper. I think of Japanese gardens as ‘spirit’ gardens. They should calm the mind, soothe the spirit, engage the soul. In such a restaurant I’d be thinking of a typical welcome drink – maybe hot green tea – to be sipped slowly while a solo instrument (shakuhachi, samisen,) played softly in the background.
Please send all your gardening questions to
E-mail: gardendoctor09@gmail.com
