EARLY SPRING, VISITORS

Two weeks, it is, since last I posted… It is the time of the Spring Festival; accommodation and the open garden at Sequoia Gardens and MountainGetaways are keeping me very busy. The unexpected 120mm in early September have resulted in more green than is usual in spring – we are heading for the best spring ever. What a pity the festival is over as my garden gets into its stride… The above photo, a 180 degree panorama, gives an idea of what the valley is looking like. The drive, of course, forms a straight line from left to right, but further away there is less distortion.

To celebrate my birthday I decided it was time to plant the hedges in the Mothers’ Garden, and give some purpose to the strange oblong of basically bare ground visitors find between the curves of the New Old Rose Garden (on the left above) and the big lawn. I finally decided on an informal hedge of Grevillea, (I think G. rosmarinifolia) an easy Australian plant that over many months starting in winter carries charming but unobtrusive coral flowers amongst its grey-green needles l which are greatly appreciated by nectar-loving birds. We also planted an Abelia x ‘Francis Mason’ hedge which will echo in shape the triangular one on the opposite side of the lawn against the Ellensgate Garden, before turning through 90 degrees, dropping to knee height and edging the seating platform. You can see the existing hedge below, together with the wisteria on the pergola in the Anniversary Garden.

These hedges are of course all grown from cuttings. Over the years we have propagated literally tens of thousands of plants to populate the six hectares of garden we have. In the above photo you can see one of the themes we have focused on in getting ready for the festival: making sure the pots were looking good. I am still smarting from a comment made last spring, about which I posted rather angrily over here…

I particularly focused on the area around the entrance, as a month before the festival everything was bleak and wintery and I was despairing about how to convince visitors it was worth even looking at my garden and calling it a spring garden… There is a strange and shady threshold you cross from a very rural parking area into a deliberately formal garden. In the event all the bright colour I decided on turned to shades of brick and mustard with a few white and pale blue highlights. But I think it is more effective and better integrated this way. To celebrate the opening, my huge (and recently transplanted) Mutabilis rose chose to push forth its first blossoms over the pots with colour. Success! On Saturday morning I took some terrible pics of the occurrence. Perhaps tomorrow I can pick up something better. Such has this week been that I’ve not ventured out with my camera leisurely in hand.

Later: a composite below – getting all the detail in one pic was not possible. Rosa chinensis mutabilis opens apricot, fades to straw, then reddens to crimson. Only semi-consciously I chose these colours when selecting my plants; my very first notes years ago for the colours in the Upper Rosemary Border were ‘brick reds and mustardy yellows’.

Since the photo below was taken last week, the struggling, excessively shaded Rosemaries to the left of the pot fountain have been ripped out and replaced with 7 Hydrangea serrata as part of a development in the shade of the tree. A small new paved area with seating will be completed this weekend when I plant the three pots with Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’, the Japanese Coral-bark Maple. Besides being a spot for visitors to rest in the shade, it also sets the scene of rustic formality I wish to impress on them.

This has been the first opportunity in weeks to work with my staff in the garden. However our visitors who have seen the garden before, all commented on how very lovely the garden is looking, how neat and cared for everything appears. It was good to share this news with the staff, because it has mostly been their own initiative that inspired these comments.

Pics of the completed Entrance Room (as I’ve decided to call it) will have to wait for the next post. Here are a few more pics of the entrance area – looking from the entrance and then looking back to it.

The entrance is also where we announce the latest of the tourism initiatives on The Mountain: the TMA  Mountain Bike Trails, two of which pass through Sequoia Gardens, one of 5 and one of 25km:

But back to visitors: allow me to brag with this pic of the visitors’ parking filled with cars last Sunday…

To end: a collage of pots…

 

JUST ADD WATER

Two projects are report-on-able. One has been twelve years in the waiting and eight in the making. And yet it was one of the simplest: the waterspout  at the end of the front door axis.

Through the front door itself the spout is just noticeable, a little whitish stripe plumb centre at the foot of Alfred’s Arches. (The stained glass tree, one of a pair flanking the front door, is a Sequoia, commissioned by my father when the house was built.)

Step outside and the spout  is a lot more visible; make your way down the first flight of stairs to the junipers and – voila!

You can see it in all its glory! Remember I said we would cut back Alfred’s Arches this year? Postponed! Those dark rustic old branches flanking the silver spout are just too good to loose. Like most of my garden, we will live with its imperfections… . And so the dustbin, planted eight years ago to act as a reservoir beneath the spout, is finally put to use.

May 2006. The wall on the Rosemary Terrace is not yet built, but already the Italian Pot at the far end of the vista has its third or fourth (unsatisfactory) planting, and the Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ cubes surrounding it are too big and too tall, obscuring its shape rather than enhancing it. These complaints were to surface regularly over the next five years, and satisfactory photos really do not exist. The one below, spoilt by a skew conifer, is about the best.

The puzzle of the problematic pot became more pressing once it was not only the focal point  which  drew the eye down the vista, but also became the first feature visitors see  on arriving at the garden, entering along the Rosemary Terrace. I removed all vegetation – and was reminded that the whole structure was most wonderfully aligned to the left corner of the terrace – besides: it was simply too elaborate. Eventually I decided to fill the pot with water which ‘boiled’ from a central spout. But the pot was too tall – or mounted too high – and one fine day it dawned on me that there was no option but to rebuild its plinth, lowering and straightening it.

Freddy to the rescue – my builder who has been responsible for almost every improvement and development over the last year; a fine and skilful man. This water feature too is complete, although the four shallow pots of annuals that will stand on the arms of the cross are yet to be planted. However the frost is (touch wood) over, and next week I shall buy the plants and post a picture from both views.

 

 

WORKING ON THE NEW VISITORS’ ENTRANCE

At its best the Italian pot which marked the end of the vista down the Rosemary Terrace looked like this. Yet even then the conifer seemed windblown and the Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ cubes were out of scale and straining at the lead. But the perceptive might have noticed the past tense in the above. Because things are changing.

The map – click on it to enlarge – shows the new visitors’ entrance I am working on. The red loop show the anti-clockwise movement of vehicles through the new parking area. And the new entrance will be along the axis of the Rosemary Terrace, past the pot whose sole purpose was to close the vista down the long, narrow terrace in the past. A beginning and an end are not the same I have realised. (Besides – the pot composition was seriously in need of attention, the abelias out of hand and the conifer departed.) Not seen in the photo below, lost in the cube of abelia at the end of the lawn, is the pot…

Now the Italian pot will be one of the first things one sees on entering the garden, and beyond it the terrace flanked by the Rosemary Borders.

How to treat it? For long I considered four clumps of zebra grass to replace the Abelia, then realised they were (a) too seasonal and (b) even more out of scale. Then on impulse I spent too much money on too many plants to give a complex mix of yellow and coloured foliage and orange flowers. And half of them quite tender to boot. Mistaaake… They stand forlorn, waiting for me to figure their future. Meanwhile I found some lovely young box plants in my own nursery. They can form, four to a hole, much smaller, neater cubes around the pot.

But what IN the pot? No longer only an exclamation mark at the end of a vista, it needs to be a welcoming first focal point too. And it is at an awkward height, the lip too close to eye level. Does one put in simple low bedding? Or a trailing foliage plant? What will be multi-seasonal? Low maintenance?

This photo shows how the abelia hedge behind the pot has been removed for the width of the terrace, and gives an idea of the arch that will be cut through the dense maples to frame this view from the entrance. The old concept of yellow foliage against green no longer is valid. The pot is beautiful as it is. Does it stand empty? And suddenly a vision from a friend’s garden comes to me: a large Chinese jar filled with water, and a pump set to boil just below the surface right in the middle, thus creating little concentric waves which gently move in and out. Eureka! And I need to get electricity to the new entrance anyway!

Back to the past. Here the late lamented Doubly looks down the Rosemary Terrace from the pots which mark its entrance from the path on the axis from the front door. The Upper Rosemary Terrace is newly planted.

 And here he is again, some time later. The borders are looking good, the edges appalling, and the Rosemary hedge, planted as cuttings, reads only in the imagination. The viburnum hedge at the end of the terrace has never had a perfectly horizontal top. That soon must change. These borders – more particularly the Upper Border – are the closest to conventional borders I have. Maintenance and design (or visa versa?) on them need to be upped substantially. For South Africans don’t come to look at formal gardens; not on our mountain anyway. People need to be wowed before being led out around the dams and up into the arboretum…

This rather randomly chosen picture shows that the border is worthy of close inspection. But its real strength is when seen at sundowner time from the stoep (veranda) of the Big House, backlit by the late sun, the dam a black shadow beyond it.

 I love this shot. It has an old-fashioned artificial quality, like an enhanced Edwardian postcard. The cosmos, the Golden Rain Tree and the  Pride of Indias are in bloom, the light golden, and all is well with the world. There will, by the way, be a single jet of water rising through a bed of river stones just to the left of the hedge. It will be visible from the front door down that axis. Semi-completed several years ago, it awaits the installation of electricity for the pump.

There is much work to be done. But it has started. Beneath the roses visible in the wide shot of the Italian pot as it looks at the moment, there stands a yellow bucket. I had just used it whilst planting five different coloured Phygelius in shades exactly matching Rosa mutabilis. At the moment it is ‘Cornelia’, rather pinker, that dominates the composition. But I have no doubt that in years to come there will be a real show-stopper to greet visitors as they enter the garden!

 Late this afternoon I went for a walk in the garden. It was a glorious day after two sharp showers during the night. Roses and many other plants scented the air. I spent time photographing the Rosemary Terrace and Borders. Only when I started photographing the roses – about which a post will follow! – did I realise the camera was somehow set on black and white. So here is yet another very old-fashioned photo, taken from the path and looking back across the whole of the Rosemary Terrace area. Ubiquitous ox-eye daisies and an indigenous diarama (angels’ rod) in the foreground. I think I shall be spending more time with black and white…

 

TAKING OWNERSHIP

‘Tis a while since I posted twice in a day! But important things have happened this weekend, and there is a decision I wish to record…

 First – here is The House that Jack Built, fast getting ready for the spring season. There is still a lot to be done to the garden so that it says more than ‘end of a long winter’ when visitors arrive – but we are getting there! And then there is The Big House…

 Last night I slept in the main bedroom for the first time – a week short of a year, Saturday to Saturday, since I first slept there when the vigil with my mother started. The Big House is becoming mine. And with it I feel myself unfurling like a spring magnolia. There is space to fill… It is a luxury I have not known since I sold my house in Johannesburg. But I love cosy, and did not miss space much, except that I also collect clutter. Then I moved into Trailertrash Cottage in January. Half the size of my cottage, and with a limited view, I soon felt claustrophobic, hemmed in by my endless generation of paper, living in my own detritus. I – and six dogs. And a winter which didn’t seem to end. 

Can you see why this afternoon’s walk did so much to lift my spirits? I write this in short sleeves in front of the open window at night, and I revel in my blossoms and my magnolias. Above is a double white purple-leaved plum – perhaps Prunus cerasus ‘Rhexii’, below is the common but beautiful crabapple, Malus floribunda, and below that one of my many bushes  – of various sizes, colours and flowering habit – of Magnolia x soulangiana. All photographed this afternoon.

 I said there is a decision to record. It was one of those flash insights that make you wonder why it took you so long to find. I’ve been planning guest parking for day visitors – expensive and inconvenient. I suddenly realised how to solve it, simply, with the minimum of levelling, with easier entry and departure and with more space, hidden away from the main garden… and then I realised that the entrance to the garden would then naturally be along the axis of the Rosemary Terrace – my most formal vista. Bring them in to the formal and the manicured, and then let them explore the natural. Aha! Excitement builds. And the grooming of the garden looks more and more like an adventure and everless like a chore!

A photostitched photo from 2006 – two pots flank the entrance from the front door axis on either side of me, and there is a high viburnum hedge behind me. At the far end of the lawn is the Italian pot surrounded by four abelia cubes. An ‘arch’ will be cut through the maples beyond it and a pergola will mark the new entrance from the car park which lies beyond the maples. This is the Rosemary Terrace, flanked by the Upper and Lower Rosemary Borders: the heart of my formal gardens.

 

THE ROSEMARY BORDERS PART 3: THE LOWER BORDER IN JAN 2007

The Rosemary Borders in colourful splendour in January 2007

By early 2007 the Rosemary Borders were looking the best they ever did. I have told of how they were planned and developed here and here. Pictures of the Upper Rosemary Border have featured over the months, but I will post  on it in detail in future. Today I wish to show you, in celebration of the coming of a new decade and in the high hopes that in 2010 I will again attempt such delicious excess, the profusion of flowers from scatterpacks in the summer of 2006-7. Most of the Lower Rosemary Border that year  was prepared and sowed to mixed summer annuals, known in South Africa as “scatterpacks”.

The Lower Rosemary Border starting to show colour. The cannas are in the bed just above the road and visible in the distance shots from my previous post on the Rosemary Borders

 I over-catered and sowed slightly more densely than recommended – plus we were exceptionally lucky with our weather and germination was wonderfully successful. I have seen scatterpacks literally scattered amongst shrubs and the individual plants and their flowers then showed up beautifully. But THIS border I pictured as excess – and boy-o-boy did I achieve it!

Evening light through the cosmos

If disasters such as shrivelling heat at the seedling stage or too much rain can be avoided, it is not difficult to succeed as long as one doesn’t start off with a residue of weed seed in the soil. Weeding is difficult and time-consuming and in fact impossible until you can see which are weeds and which desirables!

I sowed shorter seed on the edges, but will mix them in drifts in future. The young Rosemary hedge, growing from cuttings, barely survived the attack!

Here is an extract from my Moosey diary of 15 January 2007: the scatterpacks (also known as Meadowmix in SA due to the original trade name, and it seems called simply ‘wild flowers’ in NZ if I have understood correctly) which I planted in the Lower Rosemary Border were just coming into their own when I left in December. Now they are lovely! Mainly cosmos at this stage, it is infinitely better than the ‘species’ we harvested by the roadside. Flowers are larger, and there is more variety. There are lovely plants of the amaranthus family which I guess are celosias, gorgeous zinnias and many more; sunflowers, marigolds, daisies, dianthus – my experience is that different species will come to the fore as summer progresses.

What has constantly struck me in these borders where I have used a greater variety of plants and colours than ever before, is how often one achieves marvellous combinations by accident, and how seldom combinations actually jar and create problems.

Jewel colours against the water

For Moosey’s I assembled a range of collages to share my joy in the excess. Here they are: a firework display to herald the new decade!

And last but not least: one that was too good to reduce!

You want an encore?

 

THE ROSEMARY BORDERS 2: A FORMAL VISTA

This post follows on a post from the earliest days of my blog in late August, which you will find here.   It tells how I first planned the borders and how I feel about the results three years on. Let’s take a closer look at the thinking behind the design now. Three distance shots from the arboretum over more than 16 years give ‘the lay of the land’.

Six months after the house was completed, this shot from spring 1990 shows how Phineas, the foreman and a keen gardener, dealt with the vague terraces from the days when this was a potato land by turning the steep slopes between terraces into beds. In the foreground the young azaleas work hard at making a show. Across the dam the young Pin Oaks can be seen against a berm of browning pine branches, packed there after the trimming of the trees in the background. All of them have since gone. Those on the right mark the present Anniversary Garden.

February 2005 and the Anniversary Garden is taking shape, Alfred’s Arches have become a feature and what is to become the Rosemary Terrace, levelled when we had to have a bulldozer on sight some two years earlier, already has a markedly different feel to the lawns above and below it. The entrance to the Rosemary Terrace from the path was built and the large Italian jar on the opposite end was in place, out of frame to the right.

January 2007 and the Upper Rosemary Terrace is filling out, whilst the Lower Rosemary Terrace is solid with scatterpack annuals. The staircase is visible hard against the right-hand gum tree. Between the trees the bed of coloured-leaved cannas looks as good as it has ever done.

In the early days of planning the gardens along the axis from the front door I was concerned with how the lawned gardens on one’s left as you came down would differ from one another. With some imagination it was possible to see that the second lawn, being somewhat longer and considerably narrower, could be turned into a long vista towards a focal point. My dad bought into the idea and after I installed the Italian pot at the end of the vista, he decided a wall needed to be built, echoing the one below the house. I protested, rather half-heartedly, that the money could be spent more effectively elsewhere in the garden. He won the day, and I am eternally grateful, for this rather non-descript transitional area has become the most effective part of the entire garden, and gives us the most joy from the house.

Monty and Taubie playing on the Rosemary Terrace in March 2007, with the Italian pot which forms the focal point in the background. The Rosemary hedge is growing nicely.

The Italian pot never looked better than it did in February 2007. Note how the dark background necessitates lime green planting.

The garden got its name quite early on in my planning: I intended to mask the slopes above and below the terrace with two Rosemary hedges. The lower hedge has happened, successfully grown from cuttings planted in situ and thinned out later. The upper hedge, once the wall was built, became a rhythmic punctuation with clipped balls of Rosemary. Humph. They were planted, but never clipped. On my endless TTD list, “clip rosemary balls” hardly ever features. I would  like clipped balls along the way… but I don’t think Rosemary lends itself to such close clipping, and so this becomes one of the refinements I dream of… oneday, when the garden is a tourist attraction… oneday, when I am rich… oneday when I start looking for things to keep me busy…

The Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ squares around the pot have grown too tall and leggy since this shot was taken. There is too much shade for them to grow vigorously and fill out after clipping. The conifer has died of neglect – regular watering of pots is a habit I only succeeded in teaching my gardener who works in this area BECAUSE it had died. I am thinking of the next step, and seriously considering zebra grass, both in the pot and to replace the abelia. Any comments or ideas?

Looking in the opposite direction, with the bottom of the stairs on the right.

If one looks in the opposite direction, one sees the pots that flank the entrance to the Rosemary Terrace from the path on the axis from the front door. They were my 50^th birthday present from my parents, and I treasure them! Getting the hedges level instead of following the contour is one of the challenges of 2009 we never got around to facing. To the left of the hedge Pride of India is in full flower. (Crepe Myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica, and actually from China!) It combines spectacularly with the mass of cosmos in the Lower Rosemary Border, an effect I can easily repeat and really ought to!  Above the hedge there is another tree in flower which is also sometimes known as Pride of India. It is Koelreuteria paniculata or the Golden-rain-tree, also from China.  The hedge we grew from cuttings of an evergreen viburnum bought years ago, I suspect Viburnum tinus; it makes an excellent hedge in my climate, dense, clothed to the ground and not needing too much cutting.

The pots at the entrance are also planted with Rosemary.

In Part 3 I will look at the planting in these two gardens. Prepare for a colour assault for Christmas, as I post collages of annuals from the Lower Rosemary Border!

 

A LONG WALK TO LOOK AT BLOWSY ROSES

I’ve been asked about my red foliage and my roses, so I’ll identify my roses in this post and tell you a little more about other plants. And I’ll take you to a number of other spots around the garden, but let’s start again in the Beech Borders.

All the roses you see here I grew from cuttings from stock first planted in the Rondel Garden in 1996. From left to right they are: the bright pink of the Damask rose Ispahan (early 1800s) which featured often in the previous post. A few blooms of the  Bourbon rose Mme Ernst Calvat (1888) peek out from behind it and look rather similar. The pale pink is New Dawn, one of the best climbers of all time. In 1930 it sported as a repeat-flowering version of a 1910 introduction – one of the most fascinating rose sports of all time, as for the rest they are identical. To its right the rich pink of the Gallica Belle de Crecy(+-1850s) All these roses are wonderfully scented. Towards the back, more Ispahan. The red shrub is Berberis thunbergii atropurpurea and the pink flowered shrub which I love to mix with roses is Spirea x bumalda ‘Anthony Waterer’. They too are grown from cuttings; when you garden on this scale doing your own propagation is necessary ! The background is a row of seven now mature Acer palmatum (Japanese maples – a glorious sight in autumn) and to the right is Acer davidii, one of the snake-bark maples.

My nephews aged 16 and 14 were here from Namibia last week. They crept down to The Embarkment to get to the water with good grace. They knew that cutting the plants that had fallen across the path was out of the question –  an Abelia x grandiflora and two roses: the common moss rose Rosa centifolia muscosa (before 1700) and the Four Seasons White Moss Quatre saisons blanc mousseux (1835)

Another of these impressively named roses holds its own across the water after (I must admit) being dumped there some years ago when the area was much more open in the hope it would survive. To its left Acer palmatum atropurpureum with Rhododendron luteum  and Exochorda x macrantha below and Salix babylonica ‘Crispa’, the lovely Ram’s Horn Willow to its right.

Here is a view of my house through the Four Seasons Whie Moss, the camera held above my head. If nothing else this photo proves that it was not pruned last year, but survives quite happily nonetheless! ‘Four Seasons’ is a bit of an exaggeration – it repeat flowers slightly in autumn. Which was, of course, very unusual when it was first introduced…

Whilst on the far side of the dam, a view of my house and yes, my vehicle: a Malaysian designed Toyota Condor 4×4 diesel: it works like a slave, can carry 7 passengers or a load of plants or cement or even take a full-sized mattress when I go camping. Irreplaceable, it has been superseded by vehicles that are hopelessly too sophisticated and expensive to play such a multi-purpose role! (Anyone from Toyota reading this??) White climbing Iceberg roses (1968 – had to add a date for this modern classic!) grow left and right onto my house, with a Clematis montana adding to the show on the right. Overhanging the dam at the entertainment area are two Félicité et Perpétue roses, a lovely old climber from 1827. Penelope, a Hybrid Musk from 1924, graces the Cottage Garden below the Condor.

Here is another view across the Cottage Garden to where we have just been; the green  rod in the right quarter has me baffled. I suspect it is a rather potent Watsonia – but it will come as a wonderful surprise when it flowers. (No, I’m NOT going to identify the trees to the right of the willow right now!)

Near the garage the Wichuraiana rambler Excelsa scrambles up into a pine; wonderful if the mildew doesn’t do too much harm to it!

As  I’ve said before, the Rondel Garden, home to my original old-fashioned roses, commemorating Sissinghurst in its name and Francois in its existence, is in need of serious replanning… This is Rosa moyesii ‘Geranium’. I’ve never seen a single one of the famed flagon-shaped hips on it. Climate? Or just my bad luck to have an infertile strain? Iceberg on the house.

Still in the Rondel, Pink Grootendorst (A Dutch surname meaning ‘big thirst’ – there are three members in the rugosa family!) has flowers frilled like a carnation and dates from 1923. To its left in the rugosa bed is Frau Dagmar Hastrup from 1914. Prunus cerasifera in one of its many forms provides a plummy background.

We now move to the end of the wisteria arbour in the Anniversary Garden where the Polyantha climber Veilchenblau (1909) lives up to its name which means ‘Blue veil’. Below it the wonderfully subtle strawwy yellows of Buff Beauty (a shrubby climber from 1939) can be seen. Veilchenblau is beginning to climb up into the Japanese maple. I can’t wait to see the effect five years from now!

I planted New Dawn in the Upper Rosemary Border by mistake, thinking it something else. It has scrambled about, reaching for the sun through the thick planting of smallish shrubs, and set off especially well against Abelia x grandiflora. The species Rosa rugosa has been a mixed blessing next to it, suckering whenever the roots are damaged during cultivation. However the flowers are a perfect colour match with Spirea x bumalda ‘Anthony Waterer’ and the rose flowers continuously, later producing startling orange hips at the same time as its magenta flowers. I enjoy the unsubtle colour mix and the birds enjoy the food. Win-win, I’d say.

Here is another view, taken from the Rosemary Terrace; I’ve written enough and you’ve read enough. No more details on the planting.

This is the first year I’ve even noticed the Tausendschön (Thousand beauties, 1906, a Polyantha climber) in the purple crab-apple. It must be five or more years since I planted it there. It repeat flowers in a good spot. This can’t be one. But it will grow through the tree and in years to come give greater joy.

Gosh, this walk is exhausting me! We are now up in the arboretum where I planted a number of tough roses some six or more years ago. The rather garish pink was incorrectly marked ‘Compassion’ but has proved itself to be tough alright. Behind it is South Africa. I will sing its praises (the best rose since Iceberg???) in a future post. A single flower is all that can be seen of Rosa chinensis mutabilis about which I will tell you more when I post close-ups soon.

And so down we go and across the Makou Dam to the old stone barn. Tausendschön,  the mother plant of many on the mountain, absolutely loves this sunny spot where I planted it nearly 20 years ago. Beyond it another repeat-flowering pink rambler-like climber grows on the fence of the vegetable garden. I’ve known this rose all my life here on the farm and in neighbouring gardens. Unlike most climbers – and definitely most ramblers – it has an incredibly long season, being one of the first in bloom and carrying on right into winter. It is very happy here where it steals the sun from the veggies, happier than its mother plant, and being a sucker for charm and beauty I allow it to keep pride of place.

We end our walk (pant, pant) at Trudie’s Garden outside the big house, where I reiterate what I said at the beginning of the previous post: I like roses where they can grow as huge as they like and flop over complimentary shrubs and be voluptuous and abandoned. This might be a rather more elegant lady, a prim and sophisticated hybrid tea called Germiston Gold, but she too benefits from the arm of a dapper shrub to show off her assets…

 

WEEKLY PIC: NOVEMBER WEEK 2

I was so certain that the roses would feature this week. But I think a longer post on my blowsy, rather unconventional approach to roses is needed; besides which, none of this morning’s rose pics, the first I’ve taken this second week of November, jumped out at me and demanded to be used.

So instead I present: Papaver aculeatum, the South African Poppy. It fills me with wonder that this obviously-poppy poppy is the only poppy indigenous to  South Africa; is in fact the only poppy in the entire Southern Hemisphere.  It is rare but quite widely spread, and can be either a soft orange like our local strain, or salmon-pink. I consulted Mark Griffihs’ “The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary: Index of Garden Plants” which to my even greater surprise lists it as native to both Australia and South Africa.  How? When? I was quite prepared to believe that millenia ago a migrant bird brought a single seed from the North, and that developed into our poppy. But the same species in Australia? The only one there too? I must get an answer – is this possibly a mistake, or just another of the myriad questions nature dangles before us?

Our lovely display started as a single flower found wild on the farm. Over the years we have encouraged it in one spot, where it grows in the Lower Rosemary Border  amongst the unfurling leaves of the marvellously coloured Canna ‘Phaeson’ , sometimes incorrrectly called C. ‘Durban’ . I think this year I must conciously harvest as much seed as possible. This plant is a treasure!

 

Spring green

Many of the oaks are a limy yellow and abuzz with billions of bees tending to the fleeting flowers; the willows and swamp cypresses glow against the light, a green so clean it can only be spring… (sorry; corny moment; it reminds of a poem I loved to teach about  trying to write a poem that doesn’t rhyme, but it keeps rhyming. Should find it and post it!

This afternoon from my parents’ veranda I took the following picture…

Backlit afternoon view from my parents' veranda

The driveway crosses just beyond a narrow strip of lawn. A little further the main lawn lies below a brick retaining wall. To the left of the picture a pair of box plants in pots mark the top of the staircase that divides the  Upper Rosemary Border into two. To their left a clipped Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ and beyond them a strip of clipped endemic Hypericum; beyond that the swamp cypresses on the water’s edge. To the right of the swamp cypresses is a witch-hazel in full flower. It stands alone on the lawn. The various plants to the right of it are part of the Upper Rosemary Border

 

The Rosemary borders part 1 – repost of ‘A walk around my garden Part 3′

A week has passed since my rather pathetic post on the Rosemary Borders. Amongst other problems the connection was so slow that the photographs were quite fuzzy. It has been a hectic week, starting off with a wonderful but exhausting 3 day hike in the mountains, three days on site in a garden I’m currently working on and including the annual visit to our Rotary Club of the District Governor. As I’m the current president it was very much my responsibility. I’m pleased to report it was a huge success. Reasons enough I guess to explain why I’ve taken a week to fix the mess and to post something new! So here goes; first a complete re-post of the existing info, then I’ll delete last week’s post, then I’ll add something new… that’s the plan, anyway!

=oOo=

I’m getting a little tired of my pic-with-caption blogs. Time for something more substantial. I need to spend time in the garden, camera in hand, to share the first signs of new life with you, but daylight hours are otherwise engaged at the moment… work, and Friday through Sunday: hiking in the mountains!

But I’ve also been wanting to continue the walk through my garden, so here it is: part three, or ‘The Rosemary Borders’. I will write linking bits, and quote from old Moosey diaries in italics.  The result will (hopefully) be a clever compression of what happened during the last three years, a bit like some of the 60s-70s-80s experimental literature playing with time-in-the-novel. Here’s hoping!

Building the wall and planning the Rosemary Borders, mid 2006. To the left of Alfred's Arches lies the Anniversary Garden, about which I shall still write!

23 July 2006

Let’s use the next pic to pick up on the Walk around my Garden. A quick  reminder: top centre is the living room gable, and that window looks out over the Ellensgate garden. On the axis from the front door lies Alfred’s Arches, with the Anniversary Garden to the left, then down some steps and to our right lies the Rosemary Terrace. There you can see the new wall. At the bottom of the big lawn on the very right of the pic a staircase is still being built and beyond it the wall continues. The bed above the wall is 35m long up to the steps and 5m deep. It has developed over the years as a rather short season display area for self-seeders and easily divided plants: foxgloves (to stay) and yellow coreopsis and rudbeckias (to go elsewhere).

Here follows my plans for the garden from 3 years ago. It is going to be interesting to see how the results differ…

My plans here? The soil is sandy so drainage will be good. It slopes north-west and will be warm to hot. I want to plant it for year round interest (so not too many herbaceous perennials!), with plants that must be low enough not to spoil the view of the dam (OK, pond!) I want an overall colour focus on muddy pinks, purples and mustards – think day lilies – but with a variety of other colours as well. Yellows and pinks must not be too bright. Shapes must be hummocky, with occasional vertical accents, and varied leaf colour and texture. At regular intervals just above the wall I want tight balls of rosemary.

On the far side near Alfred's Arches the bed was already densely planted. For the rest only a few plants were retained during the makeover.

Straightening out the upper edge which had undulated haphazardly before. In the foreground five 'Ballerina' roses which had formed a perfect clump but not been pruned for three years await attention.

Before we go any further – which of these objectives have I achieved to date? Winter shape and colour has been good, if rather subdued and, well… wintery. Colours have worked, except for the coreopsis and rudbeckias which returned with a vengeance and added way too much bright yellow. My mom loves their pluck, and so they stayed. Shapes are ok to good, textures awful. Everything is twiggy, small leaved and upright. As a result photographs tend to be fuzzy. (Not fuzzy like my original post – fuzzy as in too much fine stuff which results in leaves one doesn’t FOCUS on…) After three years several shrubs need rejuvenation.  And as for the daylilies… well they’re there for a day. What a disappointment they’ve been. Oh. And the balls of rosemary: rosemary never grows into balls – it gets pruned into them. As a kind school report would say: ‘there is room for improvement’…

And here is the garden 18 months later... across the dam Doubly is swimming and wondering what I'm up to. Along the bank are some of the many tree ferns that have self-sown over the last few years.