late spring in the garden

Just a few snaps of what's blooming in some of the beds I haven't visited in a while whilst I've been focused on the front yard.  Here's the corner eastern bed near the bird bath.  The salvia is just starting to bloom and it will continue to do so until next winter.  It's also a lot taller and more vigorous this year, even after a decent cut-back.  I've had to tie it against the fence.  It's practically swamping the magnolia tree now.

And here's the back western bed.  It's actually a fairly bland corner at this time of year.  The brunnera's still blooming (just to the right of this photo) but that's about it.  But the hydrangeas are covered in long cones of buds and the vitex has grown so much in two years.  Remember when it arrived in June 2010 it was this big!

I thought I'd also show you a picture of my sad little maple - not so sad these days!  The newest growth is still lovely and bright.  It really seems to love its new home so hopefully it will continue to slowly grow and thrive this summer.

autumn photos

I'm alive, I promise!

I was on a wonderful holiday in Turkey for two weeks; three weeks and 500 photos later, I'm only halfway through sorting them all!  So I've been neglecting both my garden and this blog.  Here's a bit of an update.

This autumn has been a real stunner in Melbourne, after a wet summer and a cold snap.  Unfortunately I missed the best of it, by the time I got back a lot of trees were just past their prime.  I missed my crepe myrtle's show entirely and after all the effort, missed the best weeks of my white anemones!  But my little maple put on a real show this year, it's the first autumn it's really shown off.

The time last year I was still referring to the poor thing as the "sad little maple" and it looked like this!

Big improvement, isn't it?  The oakleaf hydrangea is also looking very handsome, I reckon there's more red in the mix this year:

Compared to last year (the leaves did lose their green eventually but didn't gain the reddish hue):

I also had a little surprise come out of my giant elephant ear colocasia.  I've seen the flowers on my Amazon Queen colocasia before, but never seen them do this!  I'm not sure if it was just that the species type was more mature than my Amazon Queen or what, but it made a cheerful bright seed pod that looks a bit like an exploding triffid corn cob.

Finally, a quick snap of my lovely little colmanara hybrid orchid.  I took the advice of the grower I bought it from last year; when it finished flowering I put it outside on the porch.  It's grown several new pseudobulbs over the winter, and doesn't seem to mind the cold or the added sunlight from the low winter sun.  It's getting a few black spots that I hope are not mold!  No sign of new flower spikes though.  I wonder if I'll go to the orchid show again this year, and if I'll take home another orchid from this hybrid family.  The whole family seems to have drop-dead gorgeous flowers, and it seems to be pretty easy to care for.  But the real test will be whether I can get it to flower again!

That's all for now.  It's definitely winter now which in the garden is a time for reluctant maintenance in the cold. I've only got a few winter veg to look after this year so it's mostly a matter of raking up the rest of the leaves and getting through some major winter pruning tasks.  So you might not hear much from me for a little while, but I'm still here!

anemones at last

I decided a while back that one of my planned additions to the garden were white anemones (also called Japanese windflowers).  They're just so graceful and charming in the autumn garden after the heat of the summer has passed.  But I didn't realise just how hard that would be to achieve! 

Garden shops tend to sell plants like this when they're in flower so they're more appealing.  So as I saw the anemones flowering in my neighbours' gardens I starting asking about anemones in my local garden shop.  It took them a few weeks before they got them in ... and they were pink.  I've got nothing against pink flowers in general but to me, pink anemones just don't have the magic of the simple, clean white ones.  So I looked around at other garden shops.  Pink.  I checked back at the local.  Still pink.  Bunnings?  Pink.  I had a chat at my local and found out that they'd called every one of their suppliers, and only one had white anemones and they weren't yet big enough to sell!

So with atypical patience I asked them to put down my name and waited for my anemones to grow in some distant nursery somewhere.  Every weekend for about a month I'd stop by, just to check if they were in yet.  At last, just before Easter I got a message on my phone that started with "now don't fall out of your chair, but..."

At last they'd arrived!  As soon as I could I stopped by and sure enough, there were the little baby anemones.  And also some big, beautiful two-year-olds covered with perfect white flowers.  Now usually I'm patient enough to buy the small plant and wait a year for flowers, but not this time.  I'd waited long enough.  They weren't cheap, but they were mine!

Here's the "before" picture of where they went, in the back western bed. 

And here's the after - one on each side of the vitex bed (it's hard to see the one farther from the camera).  I took out a few more tufts of the liriope; it's a tough little plant and a good contrast but boring and worth sacrificing for these beauties.  Next year they'll grow even higher, their flower heads dancing in the breeze.

I'm really starting to be happy with this corner of the garden.  The vitex is growing incredibly quickly and the hydrangeas are powering along slowly but steadily.  The Japanese maple is doing so much better in its new home and the brunnera "jack frost" (just to the side of the nearer anemone) is happy too.  I'm amazed at how big the elephant ear colocasia has grown in that back corner, so it's obvious that the two small ones at the corner of the square bed are going to have to move soon.  And I've let some wild violets take seed behind the vitex to give the dichondra "silver falls" some competition.  The marigolds and ageratum will die down over the winter but they're still going strong for now.

Now I couldn't just let you go with only that distant view of the anemones, could I?  I've been playing with my new smartphone recently and having a ball with a camera program I downloaded that lets you set all kinds of old-fashioned filters on your photos.  So here's a whimsical photo of the anemones to finish on.  I hope it captures for you the beauty that attracted me to these simple, pure, white anemones.

october in the garden

Just a little update of what's thriving in the garden this month.  My geraniums are at their spring best.  They've overcome some winter rust (still hanging around but not keeping it down) and they're just bursting with colour.  In fact a few branches have flopped over from the weight of the flowers!

In contrast, the side bed is usually ugly and plain: to the right of this picture is all the utility crap like the water heater.  But in this brief moment, the hebe are blooming and the alyssum are going crazy.  Look at those clouds of white!  I let the alyssum self-seed about the place, including the path.

The clivia's looking amazing too.  The begonias survived all winter long without stopping.  Doesn't quite match the orange of the clivia, but who cares.

And finally, my little maple is looking stunning!

Did I mention already that I love spring?

spring spring spring

Spring is well and truly here!  We're getting more and more days that touch on 18 degrees and the last week has had a fair bit of sun.  The days are longer, the fruit trees are flowering and deciduous plants are starting to break dormancy.  Here's my little Japanese maple, bursting with life in its new home.  It has lost a bit more of its tip growth but I'm hoping this new spot will see it thrive from now on.  I love how vividly golden the first growth is, it's actually tinged slightly with red too.

This is that little Brunnera "Jack Frost" I mentioned.  Almost not worth the photo at the moment but isn't that foliage lovely?  By next spring it should fill out to around a half-metre clump with blue flowers that look exactly like forget-me-nots.

And I can't stop taking photos of the hellebore!  I can't quite believe just how many flowers they put out!  Last year only one clump had any flowers and it only had a few.  This year all three clumps are covered with blossoms that start out dark purple and fade to mauve.

Unfortunately, my cavallo nero has also felt the call of spring and decided to flower.  It's kind of cute actually, a little mini broccoli head.  Shows you how closely related the brassicas are (broccoli, kale and cabbage).

This is the purple-sprouting broccoli I started late in the winter.  I don't know if it'll grow fast enough to harvest a head before I want the pot for a summer vegetable.  But in the meantime the radishes I planted around it are coming in really well.  They should be ready to start eating within a week.  I'm thinking I'll make a salsa with tomato, onion, radish and parsley.

Finally, I had to take a picture of my compost.  In the autumn I ran out of room and had to leave a lot of the fig leaves under the tree.  They became absolutely full of worms, which all got dumped in the compost bin once there was room.  And now whenever I turn the compost, it's packed full of them.  The photo's pretty blurry but it gives you an idea - there are even more than this but they instantly shy away from the light.

Mmmmm that's good compost.  I've actually run out of space for compost in the beds where I usually put it.  I went to put some under the hellebores and realised there was already so much of the manure/soil mix that any compost would start to bury the plants!  I'm going to have to start putting it on plants I don't usually bother with, like the cumquat trees or the birch trees out the front.  Better to have too much of the stuff than not enough, I say.

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.

happy little maple, the back bed, and favourite flowers

I'm glad to announce that the sad little maple tree survived its ordeal.  As you can see the tips of the longer branches have died, although some of them have buds that haven't sprouted yet.  But I'm very proud of its tenacity, and I hope that this year is kinder to it than last year.  Hopefully I'll remember to water it more often!  In the meantime it's going to get some coffee grinds around the roots this weekend.  It loves acidic soil and the grinds should keep the surface roots cool.  I just had to learn the hard way last year, only to put a thin layer of grounds.  Anything as thick as even 1cm turns into a hard caked crust!

I thought I'd add a picture of the back bed whilst I was at it.  The pansies in the raised beds are doing OK but I don't think I'd plant them back there again.  They want more sun, the blooms are large but don't last long, and any bit of rain makes them flop over.  Compare that to the smaller violas I describe in a moment...

In the meantime the oakleaf hydrangeas are starting to wake up from winter dormancy (they're too stick-like to see in the photo but they're near those lamps in the raised beds).  I also wanted to bring the perennial statice to your attention, it's those clusters of broad dark leaves with the whispy purple flowers.  They are fabulous plants, the blooms last forever, all through the autumn.  And when the autumn flowers faded it had already put out another set of buds which bloomed with the spring.  Two long shows per year, and they're tough and drought-friendly.  A great find for any Melbourne garden.

The big bed in the middle is full of manure and waiting for this year's veggies.  I'm thinking I'll try edamame soybeans, the kind you eat freshly steamed as a snack.  It's a Japanese snack I highly recommend if you haven't tried them.

As promised, here's another look at the violas at the front door.  Now you can see why I prefer them to the pansies ... they put out so many cheerful blossoms and they've done so all winter long.  The trick is to pick off the spent flower heads every so often so they spend their energy making more flowers instead of making seeds.  Will definitely grow again next winter.

Next we have probably my all-time favourite flower, geraniums (pelargoniums).  I keep showing photos but I can't help myself.  I can't quite get over that twelve months ago these were tiny seedlings with maybe six leaves.  And now they're going nuts!  This is the cluster that's done so well I've had to prune it back already.

My clivias are doing well too.  I planted them in the autumn and they've all put out new growth, though only one decided to bloom this year.  But what a bloom!  This variety is meant to blossom twice a year, so maybe by the autumn all three plants will be ready to bloom at once.  And in the meantime, I think one of them has had a baby.  You can just see a little green leaf coming out of the bark in front of the parent.  I think it's a "pup", which would be great, I'd love to have a thick cluster of clivia in this bed.  Though I can't recommend them yet as they haven't survived a Melbourne summer yet...

And finally, another flower I can't yet recommend because I don't know if it'll survive the summer.  My hellebores survived a vicious aphid attack, and one of them decided it was ready to flower this year.  I'm very happy with the colour, they came from a mix so I didn't know what colour they'd be.  They go semi-dormant over the summer so I hope that means they'll survive the heat.

update on buds

The plum trees are covered in blossoms!  Last year they had maybe a dozen blossoms between the two trees, but look at this one this year!

And the bees have taken notice.  Apparently plum blossoms aren't that attractive to bees so sometimes people have trouble pollinating them.  But this afternoon there were at least four bees flying from blossom to blossom as if their lives depended on it.  Maybe this means I'll actually have plums this year ... and I'll be able to find out what kind they are.

Ah, the wonders of spring!

In the meantime, my little maple is powering along with lots of buds already this size.  Notice how intricate and defined this bud is?

Unfortunately the one that got hit by budworm isn't so lucky.  Notice the difference, how half the bud is stunted.  It probably won't develop fully even though I'm pretty sure I killed the worm.  I hate them, one little worm can really set back such a young and vulnerable tree.

speaking of sprouts

The seed sprouting upstairs has inspired me to take some snaps of all the sprouting that's going on around the garden.

As I mentioned last week, the tired old plum trees are making a comeback.  Here's how much we had to cut this one back last year because the top half had died off.

Not only is it now covered with blossom (much more in that pic which is from last year) but look at all the new sprouts coming from the branches!  It's trying so hard to live.

My designer twig is also powering along well with lots of new sprouts of both leaves and blossoms.

And here's my sad little maple tree, like the plum tree it's also trying so hard to live.  The tips of most branches are dead but there are still plenty of tiny buds farther down.

It gives me a lot of respect for the rejuvenating power of life.