A week ago I returned from a 20-day marketing trip to Kwazulu-Natal during which I covered over 4400km. The first thing I did on arrival was take a quick dusk walk around the garden, and followed up with regular walks thereafter. As I write this at the end of what has been a busy first week home, I can claim: autumn is at its peak! Minutes after I arrived last Saturday, friends from Bloemfontein, lovers of the garden over many years, arrived for their first ever autumn visit. Do you think they enjoyed it?

These first photos were taken at one of my favourite autumn spots. The red maple is our darkest red Japanese maple – I suspect it is ‘Bloodgood’ although very few of our Japanese maples came to us bearing names. In fact this morning I discovered that the graftings propagated from it by my friends Laurie and Erie from Sandford Heights Nursery at the top of Magoebaskloof are sold as ‘Jack’s Red’!

So here it is again: a weeping flowering cherry and beyond it ‘Jack’s Red’, then a swamp cypress just beginning to turn and ‘Jack’s Red Plane’ – a plane I found in a KZN nursery in April some 20 years ago bearing red instead of yellow autumn leaves.

I have after a week at home yet to take any systematic autumn shots – and thus I present to you now a selection of photos in which Japanese maples unashamedly predominate…

It’s been a good year for mushrooms – I’ve never before seen a fairies’ apartment block! (Colour-coded, of course…)

Here is the view from the bridge, looking across to one of our best autumn views.The House that Jack Built is a little to the right when seen from here.

We are back at the trees in the first shots now, looking at the stream as it flows beneath them; a branch from Jack’s Red (I’m liking using that name ) and leaves from the weeping cherry. And then a self-portrait taken meters downstream.

A close-up of you-know-what…

We are due to move on now to the maples at the Beech Borders, the most overwhelming of all our autumn sights – but I think I’ll first have to sort through that pile of pics…

This was the view from The House that Jack Built in early 1990; the bridge would today be on the far left, the many trees planted that summer are lost in the scrub and only one of the three oaks of earlier planting can be identified, pale green in the middle of the right quarter. I start with this picture to illustrate the wall of pine that lay all along the road across the valley. Around this time my father made a decision that would change the garden, and significantly increase its size, impact and variety. That whole plantation would, on maturity, not be replaced with another planting of pine but by an arboretum; a collection of trees in variety.

I have said before that both my parents’ interest was trees, rather than gardening. I remember them after their first trips to Europe in the 70s waxing lyrical about the trees they’d seen: planes in Hyde Park, copper beeches in Zurich… it continued: in the 90s my father was eyed suspiciously as he photographed and studied the oaks in the White House gardens… You see, in South Africa temperate trees are not widely prized. The Cape has its oaks, Natal its planes and the cold hinterland its poplars which go yellow in autumn; old Johannesburg might be known as the largest man-made forest in the world; but seldom do you find the awareness of trees in their diversity that marks many of the great gardens of the world. Hugh Johnson’s ‘International Book of Trees’ was seldom on the shelf – whether in my house, the big house or my parents’ Johannesburg house.

By 1997 the pines were being felled, leaving scarred earth and piles of pine rubble across the valley. It was also at this time that my father had a triple heart-bypass in his 68th year. For the past seven odd years we had been buying trees all over South Africa and nurturing them in a special nursery on the farm. My father and old Phineas, the foreman, had, like a pair of old magicians in cahoots, been growing trees from seed and even – in the case of the Sequoias – from cuttings. They had propagated literally thousands of azaleas to plant between them. There was a steep area of well over a hectare – some three acres – facing the morning sun but protected from the afternoon heat, waiting now to receive these treasures. But first my father installed an extensive irrigation system. For, so we had concluded, the biggest difference between our valley and the rest of the temperate world, lay in the fact that spring was often the hottest, driest period of the year and just as the precious leaves were unfolding, plants would be stressed. Because of those six or eight weeks, my father took precautions. And in the early days, as the young trees established themselves against the hill, Phineas could often be seen way after ‘chaila time’ and before the official start of the workday moving the sprinklers, their late positions marked by dark overlapping circles of wet earth. But first, through the spring and summer of 1997-8, I learnt a valuable lesson from my father: count what you have achieved, not what you must still do. On an almost daily basis, now thoroughly recovered from his heart surgery, he would phone me where I was still based in Johannesburg to report: “Today we planted 15 trees, 5 shrubs, 30 azaleas. That brings the total to date to…”

Here is a picture from those early days. We did not know if it would take 5 years, or 10, or 20 to make an impact. We presented my father on 27 September 1997, my 41st birthday, when every member of the family planted a tree in the arboretum, with a copy of Thomas Pakenham’s book ‘Meetings with Remarkable Trees’ inscribed: “We celebrate the work of a remarkable man – few people ever plant an arboretum, fewer still do it in their late sixties. May your trees still pay tribute to your vision into the 22nd century.”

This photo I took less than 12 years later from nearly the same position, of my father, his dog and his arboretum.

With the exception of the photo of Louis with his tree, the photos taken on that September day were abysmal. And ironically most of the trees, with the exception of his, have proved disappointing. My father’s Sequoia, one of a row, is today the runt and my mother’s fancy conifer reverted to something very basic; my oak died and had to be replaced and my brother’s plane has not grown more than a meter in 15 years. But the arboretum as whole has thrived,  as the photo below shows.

My father planted other areas too. After a massively successful germination of Liquidambar styraciflua   the concept of the double  liquidambar avenue, over 100 trees marching up the boundary towards the original 1930s planting of Sequoias, was born.

Those Sequoias, which gave the farm its name, the wood used in both our dream-houses and the propagating material for the trees grown from cuttings, can be seen to the right of the photo below.

In the early 90s the first of the young Sequoias were planted to form an avenue along the driveway leading up to the new house – below, in autumn 1997 as the arboretum was being prepared, they are just starting to make an impression.

The next photo, a self-portrait I took once I was living in the big  house, shows how imposing they have become in a mere 20 years:

In the far corner of the garden lies Quercus Corner – my father’s collection of some 50 different oaks, many grown by him from seed. One day I’d still like to get an oak expert in to identify the many we don’t know…

We used this photo of my parents looking across Quercus Corner on my father’s funeral program –  and ended it with this one:

My father is a man who left a great many legacies, who did much to promote industry in this country, and who always cared deeply for others, a gentleman and a gentle man as Louis described him at the time of his death. As Stanford Lake College matures, the trees he donated and even helped plant there before I became involved with the school are also maturing. But no legacy is as tangible, and it will hopefully remain so for decades to come, as the trees he planted on Sequoia.

This is part of a series – part 1 and part 2 can be found by clicking on the links; future parts will focus on the development of the formal areas of the garden.

This is the view that greets me in this new month. Everywhere leaves are subtly changing colour – becoming paler, or darker, yellower or redder in preparation for fall.  Autumn on Sequoia Gardens has begun!

PS: below is another shot, taken with my cell phone on 2 April – a rare (but becoming more common now) sunny morning; often  we start with cloud in summer.

In December 1978 I spent a month clearing invader trees on the farm – my first stay of more than a few days on the farm. This dog belonged to the farm manager, and he left sometime in 1980. Where he lies the big water oak in front of The House that Jack Built now stands. It was one of the first trees we planted. Nothing you see here was part of the development my dad and the family started. That all came later.

From within what is today a 2nd generation pine plantation I look across my meadow and my cottage, across Freddie’s Dam towards the beacon that has stood out since the farm came into the family over 60 years ago: my mother’s bluegum tree. It is difficult to imagine a time when the valley this empty.

I have said The Plett was brought into a featureless valley. There was the stream and two dams. Very little else. Today the big house stands between the two tall bluegums breaking the horizon on the right and on the very right the old barn can be seen, visible down the length of the valley in those long gone days! Did we picture the valley as it is today? No. Or perhaps a little. We knew we were ‘improving’ it. But so little of the laying of the bones was done consciously, with specific effects in mind.

Here from a few years later – perhaps ‘85 – is Flora’s Path, the line of Chinese maples that mark the end of the garden in front of the big house. On this side now lies the New Old Rose Garden, and beyond the trees the parking area for visitors. I remember we planted these trees to mask our much enlarged staff house, as well as my uncle’s. In those days the main vista was still down the valley, not across it, and these two new and raw structures rather dominated the view.

One of those photos which seem quite ridiculous at the time, but grow in value as time passes: my mom indicates how much a Swamp Cypress has grown since ‘last we looked.’

Also from the early 80s, a photo which has become quite important. Why? Between us and The Plett runs a hedge of abelias. They were moved from my folks’ house in Johannesburg when a new terrace was built outside the dining-room there. My father deliberately, consciously, and possibly resignedly planted them here to mark, as he pointedly put it, “the stone-end of the garden.” We would not, like our neighbour at Cheerio Gardens, lose the plot and turn our farm into a garden. We would garden around The Plett only. Except of course for the few trees we planted into the wider landscape….

When the big house was built they were moved to form a hedge along the staff house; by then they no longer marked the end of the garden… And when my dad started building, old Phineas, his foreman, proudly informed him: “My lawn will reach the dam before your house is completed.” And it did.

Up until then the area between The Plett and the dam was just grassland, showing the remains of the terracing which had been done to make the slope less steep back in the days when these were potato lands ploughed with a mule-drawn plough.

October 1990, and both the house and the lawn are complete, although most of the trees in the garden area are still self-sown pines and now being systematically removed. In the foreground the azaleas that today form a solid mass two meters high are young plants yet to knit. The pin-oak under which the bench stands today can just be made out in front of the left end of the huge heap of brown pine branches which must be the reason the soon-to-depart pines are looking so neat.

In the next instalment I will tell of the coming of the arboretum; here meanwhile is a damp early autumnal picture, taken this morning, with which to end this post.

In my previous post I promised some more summery pics to show that autumn was not all… Now as I read about England caught in yet more snow, I think it is time for a colour injection. These photos were taken on last weekend’s walk, and summer heat is still with us although some early mornings have called for a sleeve.

These cannas grow below the old barn – the red is a species (or near species I grew from seed collected some 25 years ago and the yellow is a later acquisition. The spotted canna was only planted this summer, given to me by my father from a single plant he planted a few years back in Johannesburg, and which was recently divided and moved.

The above photo from 5 years back when my lovely Border Collie was still with us shows this area as a whole – and here you will find a post from 3 years back on a canna garden I wish to revisit!

This Red Hot Poker grew wild on the farm and we moved into the Cottage Garden some years ago. Its season is short but dramatic.

One last pic for now (most other flowers are white and can wait); this is a dark cosmos, blown over and seen against the weathered brick of the wall below it  – rather a nice way of seeing these dramatically simple daisies I think!

It was only on Sunday afternoon that I got to taking the dogs on a long exploratory walk. The mission: to determine what advances autumn had made during the month I was away. Already, on waking on Friday morning, I was surprised at how cool it was; especially after braving 36 degrees of heat in Cape Town only days before.

I maintain that the first subtle signs of changes in leaf colour happen by mid Feb, by mid March autumn gets going and mid April to mid May it is at its peak. So I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that the above sights greeted me on 17 March: a birch in full autumn glory!

It was not the only example of Look at Me Now! Here a dogwood struts its stuff as only a dogwood can. I think it is Cornus sanguinea, but I’ve always had my doubts about these small shrubby trees which I grew from seed I imported nearly 20 years ago. As it has never flowered for me, identification is difficult.

The beautiful little pagoda-like buds identify Cornus florida, as do the bright colour of early leaves against the still fresh green of others.

Quieter, but lovely, are two trees we bought together as Acer rubra; I have no reason to doubt this, except that they lack the autumn drama and staying power they are known for in other parts of the world. In addition the one tends to yellow rather than red autumn colour. They are planted meters apart.

Oh (and I won’t say this too often) – one can see we’ve had a harsh summer with several hail storms and plenty of wind. Or is it just that the battered leaves are the first to give up on life?

I’m darned if I know what these lovely leaves belong to – a viburnum? It is one of a mix of seed-raised plants in what I call my hedgerow. Bit of thinking and research needed here…

We are back a little beyond where the very first photo was taken. One of my most interesting trees grows here, and soon I will again try cuttings for my friend Jo… It is a plane tree, but instead of turning yellow its leaves turn red. I found it amongst hundreds of other quite normal planes at a wholesale nursery at about this time of year. Last summer it took a bit of a knock when a huge old pine fell and caught some of its branches, but it has thrived this past summer…

It is one of the first trees to show definite colour change in mid Feb; here it is in mid March and it has staying power till mid May – longer than any other tree!

There are other pics from this walk, and subsequent ones. More summery, less autumnal. But this pic from the end of the walk, warm light reflected after sunset from a bank of clouds to the south-east, is a good place to end off for now.

For the longest time ever I have not posted to my blog. Three attempts from my unbeloved blackberry since I left for the Cape on business have (not surprisingly) failed. So tomorrow at a wi-fi hotspot I will backtrack to those lost posts and add this one, written from my friends’ beautiful pad in Tamboerskloof on Friday evening. And by the end of the week I will be back on Sequoia after a long month away…

I want to tell you a story of a wedding on Sequoia. A very personal story and a very romantic wedding. You can see the bride and groom in the top photo in The House that Jack Built – and the wedding party, appearing rather relieved that the knot has been tied, on the photo above. It was taken on the dam wall at Cheerio Gardens, 500m higher up on the same stream as my dams, where the wedding and main reception were held in October 2012, on a date carefully chosen after consultation with Yours Truly…

But I run ahead of myself. My story starts with an earnest blond boy who came strolling along the road below THtJB with his fishing rod over his shoulder one fine morning  in 1989 whilst I was building the cottage. We had a long conversation, amongst other things about Ninja Turtles where he touched on materialism and peer pressure, but eventually he admitted which of the Ninja Turtles he coveted. Michelangelo, I believe it was.

He was visiting his grandparents, my uncle and aunt, on the portion of the farm across the road. Later he returned on a visit and brought along his best friend, a smaller boy, quick and sharp with clear black eyes and eyebrows and a passion for photography. His name was Eugene van der Merwe – and he became the professional photographer who took  these glorious pictures; he is currently between websites, but you can read more about his work in this lovely article with pictures by him, from the fairest Cape from  where I write this – http://www.ormsconnect.co.za/2013/02/an-introduction-to-lith-printing/

We jump to early 2012. The future bridegroom comes to see me. He is planning to propose to the lovely blond girl whom I have now met on several occasions – usually when they come mountain biking with a group in the area. But first he needs to know which exact weekend he must tell her they are to get married, for everything must be perfect, the right azaleas blooming, and the right cherry trees in blossom. And his friend Eugene will be capturing the event on camera…

What is more, he is already hatching a cunning plan. Besides all the photos on the day, he and his bride will get back into their wedding clothes after spending their wedding night in The House that Jack Built, and in the Golden Light of early morning, and before joining the guests for a final breakfast at his father’s house, Eugene will take a further set of pictures – with the sartorial addition of gumboots, which, as you will see, was a very practical consideration… Above they again arrive for their wedding reception; this time sans guests.

But before they set off, a classic moment is captured, complete with Clematis montana (just to keep you gardeners alert!)

Then they sit down on the damp grass to plan their next steps.

Obviously the bridge across from THtJB must feature – as it has in every bride’s portfolio who has ever been photographed here…

But I had heard this fun-loving couple had something else in mind. Something which is going to require you to scroll down quite quickly, for I don’t have the time and facilities to animate it for you…

Here goes…

One more picture, not planned perhaps for the portfolio, but one of my favourites from the huge number of lovely photos taken over the weekend…

And to end – a snapshot (this time at the reception) of the couple whose wedding was one of the greatest celebrations of love and of life I have ever known!

Last Friday I bade my father’s house farewell. During the week my brother and I had packed it all up, and I drove slowly up to Sequoia from Johannesburg with a heavily laden trailer. When I return to Johannesburg from the Cape next week, the last things will be awaiting the trip in my (once again) heavily laden MPV parked in  my cousin’s garage. The above photo shows part of the garden remodelling I did for my parents in 1997. The one below shows the aloe which produced such a beautiful flower spike at the end of last year to mark my dad’s final passage; it produced a further spike to mark this occasion – all rather unusual as most aloes flower in winter.

My cousins live in a beautifully restored old stone farmhouse against Botha’s Hill, and one of the most ubiquitous plants in modern South African gardens is doing nicely as standards against the veranda – Duranta repens. Often the yellow-leaved variety ‘Sheena’s Gold’ is grown for topiarising, but this variety has the plain green leaf but larger white-edged flowers, and is as continuously in bloom as the less showy parent, which has not only lovely blue flowers, but also showy yellow berries. I don’t think I’ve yet seen berries on these – a sterile hybrid or clone perhaps?

The garden is over 60 years old and contains magnificent stone work, covered in lichens and mosses and opportunistic ferns and other plants.

A curved stone wall backed by terraces lies to the right of the lawn in front of the house. Here a magnificent begonia, a fuchsia and hydrangeas share space with various plants of a more tropical nature – just to the right of this shot a dracaena grows! Stately palms frame  the backdrop to this wall.

Here is a close-up of the begonia, growing more luxuriously than any I have ever seen!

Bromeliads are another more tropical plant I am barely familiar with. This orange version has multiplied over the years and there are a vast number in the garden. Below is a red species, growing with a plant that is native on Sequoia too: Crocosmia aurea. In fact it is growing with a wide variety of other plants, including a plentiful maiden hair fern, and this photo gives an impression of just how lush this garden is, and what my cousin meant in her opening statement!

A complete surprise was finding a lovely soft pink Japanese Anemone growing in the garden. I know it exists, but have only seen the glorious white ‘Honorine Joubert’ and the over-saturated deep-pink (‘Prince Heinrich’?) versions in South Africa. This one is a soft pink and I will be back to beg a piece when next I am here; this time round I am away from home for another 3 1/2 weeks. But wait: I think I am hatching a plan for a nursemaid…!

One last picture, and an effect I love: a daylily (Hemerocallis) of the softest butter yellow seen against a checkerboard of stone and lawn. My cousin moans about her garden; I hope this tribute makes her see it in a new light!