A ‘MAP’ AT LAST!

It is very much a work in progress still – but a recent vast improvement in the photo on Google Earth has enabled me to start working on a map of my gardens. The first map was a bit of a disaster, so in the meantime here are a few photos-with-overlays to give you an idea of how it all fits together.

Just right of centre at the very top, a bit of my neighbour’s dam  (lake) can be seen. My boundaries form a wide arrow pointing towards it. An almost vertical line cuts down the left of the photo; my ground is to the right then and my cousin’s to the left. The grove of large trees on the very right are the Sequoias that gave the farm its name. Pine plantations grow behind the house and across the road, where the bulk of the productive farm lies. My cottage (The House that Jack Built) is near the centre to the right of the dam. The photo below gives more info.

The next three photos show the main garden area in more detail: in the second I’ve added the main axis lines and in the third defined the garden areas.

  

For those who are interested: the point 23deg53’59.61″S  29deg56’57.34″E lies just behind the big house, if you want to take a ‘live’ look at Sequoia Gardens and its surroundings. And there is a tourist map here which gives you our setting relative to the greater surroundings as well as our more immediate ones. We are just below left of the centre of the map, on the L road, below Cheerio Gardens; the word “trout” lies on my farm. My guess is that when the map is updated, it will no longer be necessary to describe where to find me: Sequoia Gardens will literally and figuratively be ON THE MAP!

 

A WALK DOWN THE GARDEN PATH

The Cottage Garden path that is. Not terribly inspired photographs, I’m afraid. The day was hot and muggy, the light bright but without contrast. I over-compensated, darkening by an f-stop too far. And I only have photoshop 4. My camera is  disappointing me. My computer screen could do with a good wipe, which might improve the pics. *thought* Perhaps I’m being a little grumpy? But I have a desire to share and so, internet willing, here are a few views of the Cottage Garden.

Three narrow stone paths cut through the Cottage Garden, so that it is never more than 2.5m wide. Negotiating these uneven paths with a tray full of teacups or drinks on the way to sitting out under the oak is an interesting way of dicing with death. This path leads from the front door towards the road. The road in turn leads past the waterlily pond and the Makou Dam in front of my parents’ house before swinging up along the Long Border to the entrance.

This is the view across the path, which is visible to the left. On the right my cottage can be seen. This grassed parking spot is the coward’s route down to the oak tree.

A pleasing mix of foliage rather than flowers characterises this spot at the moment. I added a good strain of the little wild white campion, Silene undulata, which was growing in the veld some years ago, and it now romps through the garden like a child at a party. When it gets too boisterous or starts to collapse on everything, I get strict and pack it off to bed. The next spring it returns. The bird bath is a lovely terracotta one, which suffered a friendship-ending fate when the neighbour dropped a branch onto it many years ago in Johannesburg. The glass bowl was an interesting replacement. The whole thing needs leveling – the bits in it all help to distract one (or were put there in the hope that they would)  from its leaning ways. The birds like the bits and don’t seem to mind the angle…

These last two pics show the plants on either side of the path in more detail; the bird bath is just to the right out of sight now. The green rod referred to in a post some days back did, indeed, turn out to be the orange Watsonia, W. pillansii, which is indigenous to our area. And in fact it DID grow there last year too – but not as tall and torch-like!

 

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…

 

BLOWSY ROSES IN THE BEECH BORDERS

It is rose season at Sequoia Gardens, a time of extremes of joy and despair. It is not really a rose climate; it tends to be too damp when the roses are supposed to look their best. In addition this past season I’ve not always provided the necessary support with feeding and pruning (I don’t do any spraying anyway). But walking through the garden recently and looking at the scene below, I knew where the strength – and the future development – of my roses lay…

Fact: I will never be a neat gardener. Fact: my roses often need to fend for themselves. Fact: roses in an unneat garden having to fend for themselves are a disgrace. Fact: my roses often succeed in being superb despite all these facts! How and why? My best roses flop heavily onto other shrubs, or have a strong supporting cast when they aren’t capable of taking centre-stage. Many are once-flowering old-fashioned shrub roses. Many are tough as nails – what Ludwig, South Africa’s Mr Rose has coined Eco-Chic roses and marked with a red ladybird in his wonderful colour-catalogue. I must stop thinking along the lines of outdated rosebeds! (Except of course for Trudie’s Garden, where that is part of its charm, and where I do try to do the high maintenance thing.) I must accept that the Anniversary Garden is a 60% rose flop and fix it, not as a rose garden, but as a colour-themed garden with many roses. I must nurture the roses in mixed beds if (but only if) they are happy. And I must develop a large area where the old-fashioned roses can grow as huge as they like and flop over complimentary shrubs and be voluptuous and abandoned… the Rondel Garden is too small for most of the old-fashioned roses! And because of the editing nature of photography I can go SNAP! and make it look as though this has all already happened!

Already the Beech Borders display this philosophy rather well. Refine and expand will be the motto here – there is an area of some 30 by 70m next to this that I’ve been wondering about for years now…

It lies in the rectangle between the Standen Walk and the Beech Borders which you can see in this panorama…

At the bottom of the Beech Borders lies the Waterlily Pond…

And beyond that the New Dawn rose is spectacular for the first time this year….

Now let’s reverse back up the Beech Borders…

…until we are under the beech. The round pot contained Raubritter, the wonderful globular pink rose, to mark the intersection of the gardens. It died of neglect.  Down the bottom the magnificent tree fern is a bit of a bind because it narrows down the view of the pond. Ah well… count your blessings. It was there long before my garden, after all!

One of the tricks I wish to explore is the combination of red foliage with pink roses – in fact any foliage that compliments the blowsy badly behaved roses I adore. In my next post I will show you more in other parts of Sequoia Gardens!

 

WEEKLY PIC: NOVEMBER WEEK 3

Two days of misty weather, but little rain. Three weeks of trying to catch up with the real world – so my post on my blowsy roses gathers material but also dust. It is time for the weekly pic, so I stick my nose out the front door – literally – at 5.45am to take this shot. It is actually a pretty good subject, not as much of a compromise as it sounds. It shows the good and the bad of my gardening. Let’s start with the bad: too many ‘sticky’ textures, not enough big leaves or sculptural shapes, but it shows much clearer within the frame of a camera than on site; and a tendency to dotty planting rather than dramatic use of a few plants.

 

However it shows some of my favourite plants, and an admirable ‘white garden’ quality, although the Cottage Garden is better described as a garden where white  dominates. In the foreground are the bells on grassy wands of one of my all-time favourite plants: the white Angels’ Rods or Diarama; self-sown white Nicotiana elata abound; in the background Rosa ‘Penelope’, a wonderful repeat-flowering Hybrid Musk that strikes easily from cuttings, and standing out against the dark background, the flowers of Hydrangea serrata are beginning to show colour. One of the stone paths cuts through the composition. The Cottage Garden, small in scale, muddled in execution (by accident rather than design, but appropriate to its name!), is one of my more successful creations.

 

WEEKLY PIC: OCTOBER WEEK 5

End of October – rose season! As the roses flush, spring is superseded by early summer and – usually – by now the rains have started. As I write this there is the promise of a thunderstorm, but so far we have measured only 24mm this month, all less than 4mm in a day. That means the roses are happy, as they don’t like too much water except at their feet; and therefore Trudie’s Garden features this week.

It seems it is still a time for tributes, as death rears its head among the roses. Trudie’s Garden is a collection of 30 plus roses donated to me by a friend who felt she was growing too old to do justice to her roses. I planted them outside the living room window from where my mother could enjoy them as she grew older. When Trudie passed away late last autumn, I picked the last rose of the season, scented and red, and took it to her daughter.

Amongst Trudie’s roses, mostly HTs, mostly red, were several bushes of one of my mom’s favourite roses: a huge and beautifully scented  salmon orange rose called Harmonie. I’ve just checked it, and that is in fact the international name. The name is German, the rose raised by Kordes in 1981. I always thought it was a local name as that is also the Afrikaans spelling; an excellent name for a rose with as much presence as the famous Peace. However in our family it has always been known as the Dobbie Rose, as my father’s partner’s wife, Dobbie, gave the first one to my mother as a gift many years ago, and she was thrilled to see that there were several Dobbie Roses among those that came from Trudie.

Recently, as my father was trying to contact Dobbie to let her know of my mother’s decline, her daughter phoned with the news that Dobbie had passed away. In my mom’s last days, already barely speaking and in great discomfort, I picked a Dobbie Rose, the first rose of the new season in Trudie’s Garden, and brought it in to my mother. She took it and inhaled the scent deeply, smiled, and dropped the rose to her chest. It stood by her bed through her last days. Tomorrow I am taking my dad back to their home in Johannesburg. The fading Dobbie Rose will remain on the bookcase in the living room, a tribute to three women who loved roses.

 

WEEKLY PIC: OCTOBER WEEK 4

I was going to share my roses this week, but there is time enough for that…

Rather, let’s consolidate on spring as a process, something I have shared in several posts over the past weeks. The greens have filled out and only a few trees are not yet in full leaf. The array of  fresh green shades dancing in the breeze and the light is amazing and uplifting. So here is a final chapter (?) on green, and more comment on the poppies to be seen in the foreground: blowsy tennis ball sized doubles and slighter singles.

 

WEEKLY PIC: OCTOBER WEEK 3

By mid-October spring is becoming early summer and the variety of flowers and fresh greens is overwhelming. This is the time of the opium poppies – Papaver somniferum - which came to the garden many years ago and if left unchecked can completely swamp everything else. They are huge, glaucous-leaved, and carry flowers the size of tennis balls with hundreds of ragged petals, looking like the crepe-paper flowers used to decorate procession floats, and in a strident flat pink to boot. Not, you might gather, my favourite flower. But impressive none the less and greatly appreciated by most visitors. Occasionally one would revert to being single – usually because it was too puny to double-up. I found it charming and started saving seed; gradually their numbers increased. This year, suddenly, the garden is full of huge singles in a much softer and subtler pink, with big mauve-grey blotches and the wonderful poppy structure of the flowers exposed. I pat myself on the back and  pick it  – here with cornflowers – to represent this voluptuous season!

 

THE AZALEA ASSAULT

Right. I have a small problem. I have moved 97 photographs taken over the last weeks into a file marked ‘azaleas’ with the intention of writing on this most ubiquitous plant on our mountain. As a teacher my pupils knew my favourite quote from Churchill: “Please excuse this long letter, but I don’t have the time to write a short one.”…

 Perhaps I must tell their story, and show their portraits, and add captions only where necessary. And not try too hard to edit and order. And leave room for a follow-up. So here goes!

The bottom end of a solid phalanx of azaleas which march up the hill in the arboretum flanked by tulip trees on either side. Doubly does duty as the Temple Dog.

Sometime in the Seventies we became aware of the Spring Festival, today known as the Magoebaskloof Spring Faire. For two weeks as first the azaleas and then the flowering cherries put on their show, the local Garden Club ladies opened the ‘garden’ of our neighbour to the public. Over the years the Garden Cottages where built with the proceeds: a group of 20 or so cottages let at excellent rates to retired folks in our local village of Haenertsburg. The Faire has grown to include numerous activities and venues, and the 25^th anniversary of the ‘modern’ Faire was celebrated this year.

Tulip trees guard the azaleas; in summer a study in green.

Box Thompson, our neighbour, the infinitely gentle spinster daughter of a pioneering legend on the mountain, was a brilliant horticulturist who obtained a B.Sc degree in Botany and Zoology before WW2. She at first grew indigenous and exotic bulbs in her nursery, but for various reasons started changing to azaleas and flowering cherries during the 1960s. (In “Between Woodbush and Wolkberg” her mother, Googoo Thompson, recounts her fascinating 96 years to Brigitte Wongtschowski  - a worthwhile read for anyone wanting a sense of our local history.)

Our first visit to Box’s ‘garden’ was magic. It was not really a garden but a series of mother-beds and grow-on beds and cutting beds clambering up the hills in small terraces, reflected in several still pools and shaded by a magnificent collection of trees.

This view at Cheerio Gardens is one of the reasons why the azaleas across my dam had to be white!

 “The woman is mad” we said, “she has turned her whole farm into a garden!” But the seed was sown and within a few years we were well on our way to madness ourselves… Today the gardens are owned by her niece, and go by the name Cheerio Gardens – and I have seen the glorious mix of red and pink azaleas reflected in the water on a calendar I found in Europe!

Our first azaleas we bought in full flower during the festival from Box  and from various neighbours. They would be dug up with a spadeful of soil and wrapped in wet newspaper and a piece of plastic, and we would plant them shallowly in rich acidic soil without them so much as dropping a bloom. It was wonderful, standing among hundreds of gorgeous plants and saying “Let’s have that one…and that one… and that one…”  and paying next to nothing for them! Almost immediately we started taking our own cuttings. Happily the best time coincided with the long summer holiday over Christmas; and happily my dad had had a little wall built behind which my mother organised her cutting bed. It was a comfortable height for inserting the cuttings, and afterwards she would shield them with umbrellas of bracken fronds. By the time we planted the arboretum we too were producing at nursery scale! And just as well, for my dad planted over 1000 of them during that spring and summer of 1997…

Because of the way they were bought and propagated, names never entered the picture, although yet another of Box’s nieces is very good at identifying and naming the various colours and growth patterns. I must admit that I’ve never tried to master the intricacies of the subtle differences between cultivars. In fact I’m rather vague on the whole genus Rhododendron. Originally Rhododendrons and Azaleas were classified separately. Today the over 900 species, not to mention many thousands of hybrids, are lumped together. I would say I could tell the one from the other – until an expert tries to confuse me with borderline examples. Then I’ll be useless. The easy answer is that we find few rhododendrons in South Africa (Why? I don’t know…), so it is most likely an azalea.

I took this specially to show the different growth of a Rhododendron.

Rhododendrons –and from here on I’m talking entirely from my own knowledge and experience, not from books, so don’t take it as gospel – rhododendrons are altogether coarser plants, with bigger, thicker leaves. Those I know in our part of the world are tree-like rather than shrub-like. They carry their flowers in trusses which develop from huge buds like many deciduous trees, just bigger; those pictured above are 3cm (over an inch) long. The new year’s flowerless growth is from similar but slimmer buds. The bud top right is beginning to break into individual flower buds.

Azaleas on the other hand are less bullet-like in their buds and more twiggy in their growth. The flowers show colour from early on, rather than breaking from a bud. And if you count, you will see that they are mostly carried in threes – it is the density of the twigs that gives the impression that an azalea is smothered in flowers.

And smothered they are; on a good bush one sees hardly any leaves. Typical also are the markings on the flower, and it is here where the infinite variety comes in; white azaleas, for instance we have in three sizes, each with soft green, strong green, soft pink, strong pink or no spots.

Speaking of white azaleas – these seem to have two not three buds. So I went on a bit of a search; and I change my statement to ‘evergreen azaleas have two or three buds, seldom more’. Although these azaleas are evergreen, in autumn a percentage – say 20% – of their leaves change to lacquered red, orange or yellow, set of by the bright green of the remaining leaves. As a complement to the wonderful autumn trees they are perfect!

Our evergreen azaleas come in every imaginable shade between white and brightest pink, some two-toned or picatee, reds from half-ripe tomato  via watermelon to pure rich red, and all shades of mauve.  Flower size varies from 15mm (1/2 inch) to 75mm.

Halfway between the deciduous and the evergreen azaleas lies our pale mauve one. It is more deciduous than not, and there is a quality about its colouring which is uniquely its own. It is tall and upright like the deciduous azaleas, and like most of them it is scented, but only lightly. Yet its buds are those of the evergreen azalea, although here they seem to be grouped in fours and fives. Let’s take a look at the “claws” of the deciduous azalea, and you will see how much they differ:

Try to ignore the stunning smoky flame colour and look how the flowers  start from a single point within a growth bud (you can see the bracts that covered the bud below the flowers). More importantly, look how they were folded together within the bud. If the evergreen azalea starts off like this, then the flowers have become like little candles by the time they are visible.

So to me the biggest difference between the two lies in the way the flowers are carried – the evergreens’ are candles, the deciduous’ are claws. Then of course there is the colour. Whereas the evergreens tend to white-pink-red, the deciduous are mainly in the cream-yellow-orange range, often with magnificent smoky oranges you find in few other flowers.

However you also find soft pure pinks, and many salmony tones.

And when they are covered in blooms they can be as generous as any evergreen, with their profuse claws making up for their fewer twigs. This pale cream one with russet buds has the most wonderful scent as well, like so many of these deciduous azaleas!

A 2006 photo of the white azaleas across my dam – how the trees have grown!

I love the white azaleas, but there is no doubt that there are very few garden plants that can blast you with colour the way azaleas can. Combine them – with one another or with other plants – and the possible colour effects are endless, from the most subtle to the most strident, and a walk through the garden in azalea season is about as close to sensory overload as one can get! I’ll leave the visuals to speak for themselves… 

 

Orange and yellow azaleas with the yellow banksia rose.

 

And on their own…

 

Mauve azalea and yellow broom.

 

Copper beeches are a wonderful foil for the yellow molls azaleas.

 

The saturated combination of chrome yellow kerria and tomato red azaleas.

 

Wisterias at Sequoia Gardens

Someone asked for more pics of wisterias… and I have long wanted to consolidate my wisteria photos into a story – so here goes! Most of our wisterias we grew from seed, taken from a plant which was the off-spring (clonal, I think) of one at the family farm which was originally planted in the early 1900s. We grew them because we – my dad and I – had just discovered the joy of germination on the farm and well: because they were there! Wisterias carry long velvety seedpods with big seeds that call out “good with beginners”!

These first two photos are in fact the last I took. This particular plant, incredibly robust, covers a camphor tree and the adjacent pin oak, which is just visible beyond the camellia on the right. It has completely swamped the small pergola built for it between the two trees and has set off through the adjacent shrubbery, where last year we realised that it was leaning too heavily on a flowering dogwood and twenty assorted shrubs. I was looking at it yesterday and thinking that it needed further curtailing. The blue spikes below it are Scilla natalensis, a bulb which grows wild on Sequoia. The netting is to protect it and the young roses from the deer (more correctly buck – duiker and bush buck). Early in the season when food is scarce they love to nibble on fresh rose foliage and the blue  firework flower stalks.

Here it is in close-up. Definitely; this year we will search for rooted cuttings amongst its meanderings. It is floriferous, with good colour and long racemes, and the fact that it is two weeks later than most can only be an advantage. I will plant it in the huge old mother-pine where its sister’s dumpy flowers are over before the yellow banksia rose gets under way.

Every year I have to act the contortionist just to get the yellow and mauve into the same frame. The banksia was planted by a friend’s mother as a young woman. When their yard was subdivided, he offered me the huge old root ball. Within three years it proved a good investment, worth transporting 350km (over 200 miles) to its new home!

Today I went and took this photo specially. The banksia flowers 10 meters up into the tree. The wisteria reaches twice as high and will eventually climb to the top of the tree – but no longer has a single flower.  Now imagine the banksia combined with the day before yesterday’s sprawling giant…

The next example I think is a brother; a sprawling good-for-nothing brat, a disgrace to the family name; why he has not been disinherited I do not know! He grew right here from a root in what used to be the nursery holding area. As a result he was a bit neglected as a child. Surrounded by trees (some of which have subsequently been removed), he didn’t have one of his own to look up to – and so he was left to his own devices and became a scruffy introvert. The brown behind him is an unsuccessful rescue job (just as well, considering where it was planted), a conifer from a terracotta pot that I valued more than its occupant. Beyond, an assortment of conifers including a gawky ginkgo not yet in leaf. The area to the right is the future Sage’s Walk, a path through a  collection of salvias (in sun) and plectranthus (in shade) culminating in the azalea crescent in the distance. It is also the area where most of my collection of seed-grown pink deciduous azaleas are concentrated. Their twiggy outlines add to the general scruffiness, but by this morning they too were coming into flower!

We now move to an area up on the boundary below the neighbour’s gum plantation across from my house,  where many of the seedlings were planted just to get rid of them. Bear in mind that it takes up to ten years for a seed-grown wisteria to flower. That is according to several sources I’ve just consulted. The figure I remember is seven, and my first ones flowered at five years if I remember correctly. It was a convenient spot to dump them while we waited. Out of sight proved to be out of mind, and not one of them was ever moved. They are a motley collection, mostly disappointing and can easily be grubbed out if something better comes along. However one of them, visible in the centre, will still make me my fortune (he said wishfully.)

This wisteria’s flowers are of good but not spectacular colour, but their length and grace is exceptional. What really makes this plant unusual though is that it chose to be a tree rather than a climber. From a young age it had a sturdy, self-supporting stem. As time passed it became clear why: the space between nodes is compressed. This has a further advantage: the magnificent trusses are carried close together, so that the flowers literally hang like a beaded curtain…

Here you can see my wisteria tree, al the way from its stem to its spectacular flowers. On the left an altogether less impressive sibling grovels before my Joseph’s Coat (hmmm: Wisteria ‘Joseph’s Coat’  - it has a ring to it!) In addition to its typically short flowering season , it is most beautifully hung with silver-brown velvet pods for many months of the year, some of which can still be seen in this photo!

If the tree wisteria is my most important specimen, this one is my most successful. It grows over the pump-house (I have to stoop slightly to fit under that green cross-beam) and the surrounding trees. To the left foreground lies my water-lily pond. I have a dream of building a deck and a pergola over the edge of the water to support the wisteria and its reflection… but that will relate to developing Sequoia Gardens as a tourist destination in years to come!

To give you an idea of the setting, here is a picture taken this morning; the wisteria is spent, but the first water-lilies are in bloom! To the left an indigenous tree fern is stretching out its 2 meter fronds, at this stage still rolled and golden. And as I tend to interrupt myself when speaking, why not do so here? So here’s a bonus pic :

As the pump-house wisteria is all round my best example, and the flowers hang conveniently low, here are a few close-ups and flower studies.

Each pea-flower is perfection in itself.

And then a bee arrived to complete the photo-shoot!

Just about the only wisterias not propagated on Sequoia are the matching clones planted in the Anniversary Garden. Their tresses are disappointingly short, but born profusely and richly coloured. If it was not a five year project – at least – I would replace them though with cuttings from the pump-house. This photo you have seen in a previous post.

To end off – a romantic shot of  a carpet of wisteria flowers and a yellow iris; one of those shots that make me feel I have achieved my objective in the Anniversary Garden!