bergenia is in!

I had a very hard time finding bergenia at this time of year.  They flower in winter and shops generally sell plants in flower when they're looking tempting.  So by late spring not one shop was selling them, and even asking my local to order them in wasn't getting me anywhere.  But then I got a call at work - my local had managed to source some!  They're just little at the moment but they should grow and spread all summer long until they fill out the bed.  I call them my little cabbages.

So here it is, the patio garden in its early glory.  Soon enough I'll have updates as everything settles in and grows thick and lush ... I hope!

finishing touches on the patio

I'd been slowly collecting plants for the patio but hadn't had the time to put them in ... then accidentally cut my finger in a kitchen incident and was told to keep out of the garden for a week!  Being told I couldn't cook, clean or type was one thing, but not gardening, how sad!

At last, though, I was able to get in there and finish up the plantings.  Along the back wall are two ginger lilies, I hope they grow up nice and tall by the end of the summer as we can see into our neighbour's driveway over that fence!  In front of the yuccas are those new cannas, still settling in.  In front of those are some annuals for quick colour - red salvias and some "sunpatiens": impatiens bred to tolerate the sun.  I really wanted a row of bergenias along the nearest bed but it's the wrong time of year to get them, so I may plant some more annuals there.

Here's a view right down the patio, including the two bangalow palms.  They seem to have adjusted well to life outside.  We had a lot of cloudy days so they were gradually introduced to direct sun, wind, and cool nights.  Their new growth is powering along, I just hope they don't outgrow their pots too quickly!

And just a reminder, here's what we had in this place before this transformation.  Those thick ficus trees and cumquats dominated and boxed in the space and felt a bit bland and formal.  Now when we sit on our couch on a warm, sunny evening I feel like we're living in a little slice of luxury!

cannas, cannas everywhere

I'm really starting to move forward on the new front garden bed.  I've got a birthday party on the 29th so I'm eager to get some plants in before then!

Here's a bit of a "before".  A palm in a pot will go where that cardboard is now (we've filled TWO council bins with cardboard from the furniture and there's still some left!).  At the moment we've just got the yuccas, the pond, and some dichondra at the front.

The plan is to pull out the two shabbiest hedges along the brick and grow some ginger lily.  I also want cannas in front of the yuccas and some bergenias along the bath about to where the pond is.  Finally I'll fill in with some annuals.  Lush, green and a bit tropical!

Cannas aren't in the shops just yet as they seem to wait until they're in bloom and beautiful.  So I ordered some from a canna website.  It also let me be really picky about what I got.  There are hundreds of varieties of cannas in short, medium, tall, with leaves that are green, red, or stripey and flowers that are pink, red, yellow, orange or spotted and either large or small in size.  So much choice!

I ordered five plants and they arrived in the mail yesterday.  So far when I've mail-ordered plants they sure tend to be generous - I count 8 rhizomes here!  Three of them were a bit small so perhaps they thought they should together count as one.

I dug a shallow trench in front of the yuccas, spaced the cannas out (not quite in a straight line, that was on purpose!) and filled them in with some horse manure to enrich the soil. 

Now it's pretty clear they won't be blooming before the party but I hope they at least settle in and put out some leaves for a bit of foliage.  The variety is called "copicana" (no, not tropicana!), about 1.5 metres tall with green leaves and elongated orange blossoms.  Hopefully they'll look like this!

step by step by patio

The patio's really starting to come together.  Last weekend's project was to fill in the strip below the mosaic, where I used to grow rosemary and sage.  It's only about 20cm wide but it means we can push the couch farther back.  We dug out the dirt, roots and bark, then lay down some edging along the back and sand over the dirt.  Then with the help of a spirit level and a mallet we lay out the stones.  Finally we swept some more sand between them.  Not a bad effort I reckon!

And even more exciting, we have our couch and chairs!  Of course the cats are already enjoying them too.

I also bought a pair of bangalow palms, one for either side of the couch.  I'm not sure how well they'll do outside so I'm going to introduce them a few hours at a time for the next fortnight.  They're meant to be pretty tough palms so I hope they don't mind a bit of wind and sun through the summer!

finishing up the west beds

My goal during the Christmas break was to finish widening the west beds.  This was the last bit to go:

My husband was kind enough to supply some of the hard labour moving the rocks out of the way and into the giant pile of spares.  Although we overloaded my little hand-cart and when it rolled off a step it took a chunk out of one of the wheels. Now it sort of limps along.

Then of course I had to decide what to plant there.  In the long-term, I want the vitex in the large bed to grow wide enough to cast shade in that corner.  But in the short-term, the part closest to the camera is heavily shaded and the part farthest from the camera gets a fair bit of sun, making it hard to figure out what to plant across the two beds.  So I decided on an annual, the short-term solution.  It's called Ageratum "China blue", never grown it before but it looked cute in the picture. 
They're still just little seedlings, of course.

As a reminder, this is what it used to look like.

The geum is already starting to repeat-bloom, and I'm really happy with how everything's turning out so far!

geum

After thinking it over for what feels like forever, I finally got plants for the lavender bed.  It ended up being a spur-of-the-moment decision: I saw a little plant called geum "pink frills" at a nursery, liked them, and brought them home.  They have nice bright foliage and peachy-pink nodding flower heads.  I think they'll be a little tender to the hot sun but I'm hoping we'll continue to have a wet summer to help establish them in their new home.  I've dug in a good-sized bucket of compost around each one to help out, the soil otherwise was pure sand that had been under weed mat which meant it was very barren.

Here's the "before" brainstorming sketch for comparison.

Geum is meant to repeat-flower all the way to autumn.  I like the colour contrast with the lavender - both the flowers and the lime-green foliage.  And although you can't tell now, I'm hoping the tall gaura behind them will be another nice compliment with pale pinky-white flowers on long stems.

Here's a close up of the flowers.  Sweet, aren't they?

I just hope they like their new home!

Speaking of the rain, I probably should mention it's been raining A LOT.  We've had the wettest spring in years, which is a mixed blessing.  It's been warm, tropical rain from up north which is unusual for Melbourne.  At first the farmers were happy but now it's rained so much they can't even harvest their crops.  And in the garden, it's meant I've been bolder with planting new things in the summer which is usually a bad idea.  But I've also had some fungal problems - rust has removed almost every leaf from my geraniums so I've been using lime sulfur to save the new leaves coming in. Ah, the joys of unpredictable Melbourne weather!

transformation

Good news!  I sold the three huge ficus on ebay for $50, and better still, they came and dug them out for me!  I'm so happy!  Here's what the spot looked like before.

And here's what it looks like now.

I still can't quite get my head around the difference, it's so much space opened up!  You can see down the driveway more clearly now which isn't necessarily a good thing since when the gate is open it's open to the laneway.  But the yucca are staying because they provide some welcome screening.  I hope those hedges grow in where the ficus has shaded them out.

Now I just need to think about what to put there!  I'm considering some tree peonies - apparently they're very slow-growing but take surprisingly well to dry summers.  I just have to make sure they wouldn't get too much hot afternoon sun.  But I don't want to grow anything too big, no point in taking out one huge plant only to replace it with another.

I'm also deciding whether to put a "pond in a pot" in that area.  All you need is a large pot with the hole filled in and you can have waterlillies, water plants and even a few goldfish.  Yes, I know, I used to have a goldfish pond and I filled it in.  But I didn't like where it was, it felt like wastes space.  But a small one in this area ... I'll have to think about it.

the next step

I've managed another step toward expanding the beds. This weekend I put in the new edging in front of the lavender bed, it was pretty easy actually because the soil was so sandy and I didn't buy the really deep edging.  I pulled back the old weed mat and trimmed it off, this is the "halfway point" pictured.

I decided to replace two of the liriope with gaura, a tallish plant with little pinky-white flowers that grow on long spikes.  I'm not bothering to plant the gaura under the hose though, the liriope there has been spared.  Of course I've forgotten to take a photo of the new gaura but they're small plants so there's not much to look at yet!

This week's a hot one but I'm hoping to do the hellebore bed this weekend.  It feels good to keep moving forward!

a third big project

The other two projects on my list weren't big enough, yes I'm aiming for a third.  This is the east side bed, an ugly little strip next to the water heater and clothes line.  All it's got going for it are some little hebe, one of which is 3/4 dead.  I want to grow a small spreading tree and some lush, foresty perennials.  I started by digging out some of the pebbles to see if I could widen the bed.  Unfortunately that's not going to happen anytime soon.  I wanted to move the step-stones closer to the house, but it appears that each one is on a thick bed of concrete.  So the pebbles are going back on.

Despite that annoying setback, after about a week of consideration I decided to start by pulling out the dead hebe and replacing it with a tree.  I really wanted another Japanese maple, but I've seen how badly they get burned in a hot summer.  So I decided on a crepe myrtle, variety "Sioux" (yes, my sister, your favourite plant!).  It's just little now, but should grow a few metres high and wide, but I should be able to keep the size under control.  The flowers are pink and the leaves turn bright orange in autumn.  It started out like this...

...but I wanted to trim back some of the lower branches.  I'd rather it be a tall, narrow tree than a multi-stemmed shrub.

Not sure if I should cut off that other low branch or not.

The east bed looks like this now - not very different yet!  It'll get there someday.  I'm picturing at least one more tall narrow shrub or something between the crepe myrtle and the corner (that's the bird bath corner).  Eventually I'd like it to be underplanted with foresty things like hellebore, clivia, anemone, brunnera "jack frost" or some more tall salvias.  I also want to get some dense groundcovers like native violets and ajuga purpurea under there so the blackbirds stop kicking the mulch onto the pebbles.

First steps!

two big projects

I'm toying with the idea of a few big projects for this year.  The first is this corner of the front garden.  What you see there is a little cumquat tree and behind it, two ficus trees pruned into circles.  There's actually a third tree to the right if you can believe it, shoved between the second tree and the hedge.  Behind them are two 3-metre-tall elephant yuccas.

I'm getting frustrated by the ficus trees.  They're so tall we can't clip the tops anymore, even with the ladder.  The path there on the left is pretty narrow but the ficus keeps growing out into the path.  I have to clip them 2 or 3 times a year just to keep them under control.  And they're so thick that no light or rain gets to the ground beneath them, making that whole area a dark, dead zone.

So I'm considering cutting down all three ficus trees and replacing them with a smaller, more open and deciduous tree.  I'll keep the elephant yuccas, they don't really fit the style but they're so tall and stunning I don't have the heart to kill them.  And I'll keep the cumquat tree.  But I'm thinking something like a crepe myrtle, or of similar size and shape, would really open up that bed.  The tree would be on the south side of the yucca, which is why deciduous would be better, when it's in winter shade it'd be dormant.   I'd be able to plant underneath it, and you'd actually see the plants! 

In any case, it's best to plant deciduous trees in the winter when they're dormant, so that's a project for next year.  But I'm open to suggestions for what to plant!

The other project is for the side beds.  Remember how I filled in this half with pebbles?  Well I'm now thinking that all those pebbles are wasted space.  All I need is a path to walk along, I don't need 30cm of blank pebbles!  So I'm thinking of pushing back the pebbles and moving the bed forward, all the way along the house.  On the right side, I'll extend it at the back half but probably not the front half whilst I wait for the creeping fig to cover that ugly fence.

I made some extremely gimpy "drawings" of what this might look like.  For the nearer left-hand bed, I'm thinking I might move the hellebore forward and plant something with some height behind it.  Or I might plant something short in front of the hellebore.  Something a bit lush and shade-loving, since this corridor doesn't get much sun.

And out the back half, I'll plant something more sun-loving on the left.  I'm thinking I'll replace the liriope with more miniature yellow day lilies, to get a nice purple-yellow combination when the lavender is blooming.  But I still have to have a think about what else I'd plant along the front. 

On the right I'll need something more temporary.  At the moment the back-right half gets a fair bit of sun so it can take things like marigolds and sun-lovers, but the near-right half is more shady.  So I might stick to annuals or cheap perennials in the short term.  In the long term, in maybe 5 years my vitex (in the raise bed to the right) should start to spread some shade across that whole area.  Then I'llbe able to transform that whole right-hand side to a more shady-woody zone.

This project I think I'll start sooner rather than later.  Moving pebbles is hard work so I'd rather do it in the cooler spring.  And if I move the hellebores, they're more dormant in summer. 

Just when you think your garden is "done" ... heh.

a big swap for a little maple

My sad little Japanese maple has now survived two summers in its spot in the corner of the back garden.  The first summer was brutally hot and dry and it barely survived.  This summer was a lot more mild, but it still looked a bit rough by the autumn.  I'm not one for babying my plants and it obviously doesn't like where it lives.  So once it lost its leaves I decided it was time for a change.
This is what the back garden looked like before.  I've pulled out the marigolds and nasturtium for the winter.  One of the statice died a while back, the other was looking shocking so I pulled it out too.  There on the right is a taro plant, a very tough root-based plant that seems to be thriving on neglect.  It's even put out two little babies.

I decided that the maple would prefer the spot where the taro is now.  It's on the south side of a tall fence, sheltered from the hot summer sun.  And it's a higher spot, rather than being completely hidden in that far corner.

This is the corner where the maple lived.  I carefully dug it up, trying not to tear the roots and getting as much of the root ball as possible.  The roots actually looked very healthy, they'd spread out quite a bit in the last year or two.  Very shallow though, as these trees tend to be.  I trimmed off the dead twigs - yes, more dead twigs, it seems to be shrinking rather than growing - and hoped that I didn't need to trim off any viable twigs.  You're generally meant to do that when you transplant, because you always lose some roots and the roots can't support the same amount of foliage.  But since it's still early winter, I'm hoping I can get away with it and rely instead on frequent doses of seaweed solution to nourish the roots. 

Here's the taro in its new home.  It'll get a bit more sun here than it did in its old home and I'm hoping it really takes off.  They can get even bigger than this, so if anything it now has even more room to grow than in its old home.

And there on the right is the maple tree in its new home.  It looks so much taller when it's actually at ground level!  And I discovered that the soil in that corner is pretty much pure sand.  Not a single worm to be seen.  I dug out a fair bit of the sand and instead dug in some more of that super-rich manure/soil mix I still have from months back, chock full of worms.  No fertilizer though, don't want to burn the roots. 

You can't really see in the photo but there's another impromptu new addition.  Where the statice used to be are two baby taro plants.  Full-grown they'll be way too big for those positions, but I reckon they've got a year or two of growing first.  After that I'll find them another home.  And in the long term, the vitex in the main bed will eventually grow to be about two metres tall and spreading, shading a lot of this are (I hope!).  The oakleaf hydrangeas in the narrow beds will start to fill out too.  This part of the garden really is still a young work in progress, which in a way is far more exciting than the established plants at the front.

winter plans

I've been thinking hard about two places in the garden that need work.  The first is the big square bed that used to be the fish pond, pictured here.  After filling it in last year I've spent the year growing vegetables in it whilst I decide what to do in the long-term.  Vegetables aren't a good long-term solution because only the bottom left corner gets enough sun, which is an awful waste of the other 3/4 of the bed.

So I've spent over a year considering what to plant instead.  I really wanted to plant a fruit tree of some kind but I just don't think it'll work.  Most are too big - citrus would want more sun - most smaller fruit trees need pollinators.  So then I moved to considering small ornamental trees like a crepe myrtle.  I want something that will grow a few metres and spread out in a pleasant umbrella shape.  I think this part of the garden would appreciate some proper "dappled shade".  It's a funny mix of boiling-hot sun and deep shade with not a lot in between, and the left-hand bed gets a lot more sun than the right-hand bed.  A spreading tree of summer shade will even this out, letting me plant shadier plants on both sides.  I have dreams of Japanese windflowers to replace the Statice some day (as it's a sun-lover), and probably some more hellebore since it seems to be doing pretty well in the other bed.  A small spreading tree would also be a nice compliment to the oakleaf hydrangea, which will read a decent size in time.  Wouldn't want anything too small or it would be dwarfed by the hydrangeas.

But to be honest I'm not crazy about crepe myrtles and again there's a slight concern it wouldn't get enough sun.  Then finally, a wonderful suggestion from the OzGrow forum, a small tree I've never heard of before called Vitex agnus-castus.  Like the crepe myrtle it's a small deciduous shrub or tree, but instead of white or pink flowers it makes long crazy spikes of purple.  Purple suits me much better, and all the other flowers in that corner are either purple or orange/yellow.  Vitex also tolerates shade better than crepe myrtle.  Hopefully it'll look like this.

The other tough spot is behind the house where the camellias used to be.  I've considered a number of option but I think I'll go with Murraya paniculata, also known as mock orange or orange jasmine.  It's a member of the citrus family, tough and not fussy, but I was sold on it when I walked past a hedge in flower.  It has the most heavenly scent of orange blossom you can imagine, it actually stopped me in my tracks.

After a bit of deliberation I decided to save the last two pine bushes even though I really don't particularly like them.  Hedges aren't cheap and leaving them means I can buy two less Murraya than otherwise.

But before I undergo either project I need to top up those beds.  I've learned that soil tends to sink quite a bit after a while so it's important I fill up the beds as much as I can.  Which meant a call to Fulton's garden supplies for a big pile of dirt and another of barkdust.

I only ordered a cubit metre of soil and a half-metre of barkdust but I reckon I got a lot more than I paid for!  Just like last year I now have a big pile of dirt in the driveway.  It's a lovely soil called a "three-way" mix of two soils and horse manure.  It's quite light and friable and full of organic matter which is just the thing for my beds.  I have so much extra I'll probably spread the love into some of the beds with really inorganic "builder's rubble".

I've filled up a fair bit now as you can see, hopefully some of the dirt will settle and I can pile on some more.  I've certainly got plenty of time, winter's the best time to plant deciduous trees. 

Exciting times ahead for this winter!