Life and Colour

The change to the garden over the last few weeks is significant. From the drab dead look of winter, we now have abundant foliage and some very vibrant colour. Even overcast days have been unable to diminish the glow of some plants.

Some of the highlights of the garden are illustrated in these photos.


The first rose isn’t the most perfect specimen, but it’s encouraging to have the first flower. The rest of my roses are smothered in buds so we should get a good display. Hopefully they will last longer than last year when the majority of flowers disappeared after a few short weeks and were not replaced


I took a liking to the aquilegia the first time a saw them. It’s taken two years for mine to establish themselves, but now they are looking very healthy. At the moment we have three white plants flowering and this deep red one. The flowers are quite unusual. Another plant is on the verge of blooming and it seems it will have purple flowers. The flower stems on that one are also much thicker than on the red and white


The photo doesn’t do this lavender justice. It is practically luminescent. It was part of a “ruffles” range that was available a couple of years ago but I can’t remember what the colour was called. We had another called “Mulberry”, but that one did not do as well. A large grevillea rosmarinafolia decided to grow along side, making growing conditions a bit too difficult.


This is the first good year for this grevillea. I think it is a Poorinda Peter. We’ve had a few flowers over the last two years, but this time it’s covered in these attractive deep pink-red toothbush flowers.
Also looking promising is my prized Bulli Princess. At the moment it is covered in buds – so hopefully we’ll have no more severe frosts.
So far, since we planted it, we’ve had only one flower on the plant so I’m looking forward to seeing how prolific it will be this year.








Alongside the driveway we have this yellow and white combination. The display at its best only lasts for a few short weeks, but it always brightens up an otherwise colourless part of the garden






While the photography doesn't do justice to the plants I've tried to illustrate - they still show the marked difference between the garden now and that of only a month or two ago when everything was so drab and dead looking.

Rain & Frost

It’s been an uneventful couple of weeks in the garden, including a week of almost continual rain. A week ago, between showers, I was able to plant out a punnet of leeks and a handful of broad bean seeds.
I also made an effort at recycling our old clothes line by using the arms as posts and reusing the wire to create a climbing frame where I hope to grow next years butternut pumpkins, thereby freeing up more ground space for other things.
Unfortunately the wire looked vey untidy. I couldn’t stretch it tight enough without pulling the posts out of position, so I had to use other means for cross pieces on the framework.

The period of rain was followed by a few days of frost. One day the official temperature was -3. I’ve been covering the Grevillea Ned Kelly each night, but despite the precautions it has still suffered burning on the leaf tips.
Unfortunately, due to her size, I haven’t been able to cover the Bulli Princess and I’ve noticed burning on her leaf tips too. I’m not looking forward to the two or three heavier frosts (down to -6) that we always get each winter. They are likely to cause significant damage. Hopefully the worst of it can be pruned, leaving the Princess not much worse for wear.

The major recent development is today’s installation of my 10,000 litre water tank. I’m missing out on all of the fun because I’m at work, and I have to rely on regular updates from home. Gloria is also taking every opportunity to photograph each stage so I can see how things progressed throughout the day when I get home.

I’ve been a bit worried because it took longer than expected to get the work done. The main holdup was the delivery of the tank. I was under the impression that the government rebate expired at the end of the month and I though we would miss out, but I’ve just found out that it expires at the end of June 2011 so we’ll be fine.

I think rain is forecast again for later in the week, so hopefully we’ll get a significant start on filling the tank before too long.

Frost Protection

This morning we had the second noticeable frost of autumn. Everything has survived so far, but I am concerned about the impact the heavier frosts will have through winter. Last year I lost a lot of shrubs that were supposed to be frost hardy.

I think some didn’t survive because they were too immature and hadn’t become established in time. Others, like the Grevillea “Ned Kelly” are not the best kind of plant to grow in a heavy-frost prone area – but I didn’t find out about that until I lost one last year; and a second barely pulled through. That surviving plant is now looking very healthy, but it will certainly suffer again when we get those few -6 degree days that are a regular winter feature in this area.

I’ve been trying to think of a convenient way of protecting some of my frost prone plants overnight. I don’t want to use anything permanent because I still want the garden to look attractive during the day. I don’t feel like covering significant parts of it for a complete quarter of the year.

The best idea I’ve come up with so far is to drive two garden stakes into the ground beside it. I’ll put them in at an angle, leaning over the susceptible bush. Each evening I’ll tie plastic sheeting to those stakes to form a lean-to which will hopefully keep the worst of the frost off the plant. I wasn’t sure how to secure the plastic at the bottom to make sure it wasn’t blown around too much in the wind; then yesterday I heard a helpful tip on the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast that may be adaptable to suit the situation. It was a suggestion for reusing empty drink bottles.
I will try tying 2 litre plastic milk bottles filled with water to the bottom of the sheet, which will hopefully give it enough weight to hold it securely.

All of the sheeting and the bottles can be removed in the morning and therefore return the garden to normal during the day. The stakes themselves shouldn’t be too intrusive and can be left in position over winter.

Grevilleas

When the opportunity came for me to have a garden after more than 13 years of living in a Sydney home unit, one plant near the top of my wish list was the Grevillea.
I’d grown a very successful Robyn Gordon many years before and was so impressed with it that Grevilleas became my favourite species of native plant.

My garden now has many different types of Grevillea but unfortunately the larger flowered types like the Robyn Gordon do not survive well due to the heavy winter frosts. As well as the Robyn Gordon I tried similar plants such as “Coconut Ice” and “Ned Kelly” before I realised that the conditions just weren’t suitable.

I still have one very impressive, leafy “Ned Kelly” in the backyard. It barely survived last winter and had to be cut back severely in early spring to remove the frost damage; but eventually recovered well. Now as winter approaches again I’m nervous and don’t hold much hope for it. It is very susceptible to frost burn when the frosts are heavy, and our temperatures can drop to -6.
While it is now a very attractive bush, it has never given a good display of flowers. At the most we’ve had a short spell with one or two, but most of the time it’s had nothing but leaves. But that seems to have been a problem with a lot of our Grevilleas. They are often described as being long-flowering plants but ours, if they flower at all, do so for only brief periods.

My “Coconut Ice” clings to life in my native “bonsai” garden near the front fence-line. While it hasn’t been affected by frost (it is sheltered by some kind of Melaleuca) its roots have been restricted by the concrete-like clay that lies under the raised garden bed. Nothing has thrived in that particular bed, and the “Coconut Ice” demonstrates its distaste for its home by refusing to flower.

This week I have noticed that several Grevilleas have started to bud. They are the sharp leaved types like the G. Rosmarinifolia. One is near our front windows. It is one of the few existing plants that we kept after we moved in. At the time it was a tiny specimen that seemed to have self-sprouted in a crack in the concrete garden edging. It has now grown into one of the most robust plants we have and when flowering is a favourite of the Red Wattle birds.

The pride of our Grevillea collection is the Bulli Princess, a plant that was discovered at the Bulli Grevillea Park near Wollongong. Ours has been here for less than a year so I am concerned about its chance of survival over winter. It is now over two metres in height and about the same in diameter, so it’s a bit too big to shield with plastic. There is a photo of a “Princess” flower in my article “Gardening Progress”; however the photo does not do the it justice. The photo was taken at the Bulli Grevillea Park. Our plant has so far joined ranks with my other Grevilleas in being stingy with its flowering. To date we’ve had only one flower from it.
The experts at the park seem confident that it won’t be affected too badly by frost. They know of one growing in Canberra where the climate is very similar to ours. But then again, survival can also depend on which part of a garden the plant is growing in. Some parts of our garden seem to be more protected from the cold than others.

Grevilleas in my Garden:

Bulli Princess; Fireworks (x2) Poorinda Peter; Longistyla; Ned Kelly; John Evans; Rosmarinifolia “Nana” (x3); Unknown Rosmarinifolia; Coconut Ice; Lady O; Amethyst; Scarlet Sprite;.

There are two more whose names elude me. For some reason the name Molongolo comes to mind for one, which is a very dull rust colour with absolutely no vibrancy. The other is one of the “woolly” Grevilleas; I think a type of “Lanigera”. The latter are quite common in nurseries around this area so I’ll be able to check the name next time I go plant shopping.