EARLY SPRING

Never before have the months leading up to spring been this dry; but twice that I  know of we have had much drier years, where the water stops flowing from the dams, even if seepage means there is still a slight inflow. Those are desperate years. This year the sponge of the mountain is still quite wet after two lots of extremely good rain in early 2012, but I’m pretty certain we are at the beginning of a dry cycle. We don’t really feel climate change in South Africa – we are used to cycles of good years and bad years. In fact the last 40 odd years, from my perspective at least, have been less extreme, not more so. Unlike the UK we have not swung from one record to the next these last 20 years…

The memory of those two dry years remain. In fact my own memory of the drought of the 60s and my parents’ recall of the drought of the 30s when my maternal grandfather had to give up farming and move his young family to the city, add a spiritual dimension to the need for rain. And that is why on Friday afternoon’s damp walk, with the week’s rainfall figure heading towards 100mm, I listened to and looked at the gurgling stream and I heard my late mother’s voice say: “Oh if only my father could see the water flow on this farm!”

These shots were taken in poor light on my phone. There were many more – but most too blurred to even consider as snapshots… In the upper photo an unusual view of the rear end of the Icon Bridge, and dogwoods and blossoms and fresh greens in the distance. In the lower photo Taubie celebrates the water in her way, drinking from the brim-full overflow of Freddie’s Dam. Two more shots are worth sharing:

a white dogwood – Cornus florida and the first leaves on my favourite Japanese maple, one which has the most delicately red young foliage which turns green within weeks.

Later: the rain stopped after 101mm. Sunday was gloriously sunny and I went on a long walk with my camera. There are 65 photos I titled and added to the shortlist from 100s. The screenshot of that selection I include now because it best of all illustrates the sudden brightening, the change in the colour palette as spring kicks in… Over the next days – expect some spring colour here!

 

SPRING FESTIVAL BUILD-UP

On Monday we collect the next edition of MountainGetaways from the printers, in good time for the Spring Festival. Louis designed the front page with the spring theme taking up the whole of the upper half of the cover, instead of just the masthead. As I sit here in short sleeves, spring is suddenly alarmingly close, even though everything is still quite grey’nbeige and I thought it time to wet your appetite – and that of the growing number of potential visitors to Sequoia Gardens who visit my blog – with a few spring pictures from the past. All of them were taken at Sequoia Gardens…

Here my father poses proudly in the arboretum (‘collection of trees’) which was his great project through the 90s and which is now looking very impressive.

Marching up between two rows of widely spaced Tulip Trees is an avenue of azaleas. Later in the year the dense canopy of large leaves shield blue and white hydrangeas; still later the autumn leaves are a bright and cheerful yellow.

Another part of the arboretum; evergreens and deciduous trees of all kinds abound.

The deciduous azaleas, usually in shades of yellow and flame, are often beautifully scented as well.

Blossoms, azaleas, and the freshness of the first greens – these are what spring is about on the mountain.

However Sequoia Gardens offers much else besides… here we have Wisteria and Bearded Iris…

…and Wisteria and Japonica.

In fact Wisteria features all over Sequoia Gardens, sometimes in formal settings, sometimes scrambling through trees, or even self-supported.

Here are a few more photos, taken during late September and early October at Sequoia Gardens.

The delicacy of the early leaves of some Japanese maples have to be seen to be believed!

To begin with there is very little green, but gradually the leaves on the trees change the whole density of the views, and in a gentle year the soft greens of the young growth are one of the overriding impressions of spring.

I do think I prefer the delicate signs of spring to the in-your-face brightness of massed azaleas…

…but that doesn’t stop me from getting as carried away as everyone else when I have a camera in hand!

Why don’t you pay us a visit and come see for yourself?!

 

Part 3 DIE ROOI GEVAAR

“Die Rooi Gevaar”: Afrikaans for ‘The Red Danger’, the threat of communism taking over our beloved country, the refrain I grew up with. In fact, it was really ‘Die Swart Gevaar’ – the black danger – that they had in mind, but they cleverly turned the fight against dark-hued South Africans into the fight against Soviet and Chinese imperialism.

 

Cynical as I was about the apartheid government’s real motives, I was still deeply indoctrinated against the evil of communism. I will never forget my horror when in London at the age of eighteen – and a sophisticated eighteen by anyone’s standards at that – I discovered that Great Britain actually allowed a Soviet embassy in their country. I crossed to the opposite pavement when passing it.

This no-no is possibly why the flirtation of many a Thirties intellectual with communism has  fascinated me ever since. The youngsters who lived through the Great Depression were looking for a system which was fair and which made sense. Communism seemed to be the answer.

One such was the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who was a member of the British Communist Party from 1935-1938. He wrote this poem in 1935, obviously deeply under the impression of the irony of how far-fetched Marlowe’s rural idyll had become.

Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.

I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.

Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone –
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Thankfully the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signalled the end of Soviet  power and the (red) corner the South African Government had painted itself into. By February 1990 the ANC had been unbanned and the intricate journey to the first multi-racial elections in 1994 could begin.

There is a parallel story. After decades of apologies for capitalism, Margaret Thatcher, ‘the best man for the job’, burst upon the scene in the late Seventies, followed soon after by Bill Gates (how’s that for simplification ?) and the world embarked on forty years of unprecedented economic growth.

Capitalism was not only celebrated, but communism was trounced, and soon billion-dollar decisions were being taken by people who never knew anything other than prosperity. The glory of the system was taken for granted, and like (we now know) the universe would continue to expand, not only in our lifetimes, but for millions of years to come, so would economies continue to grow and the world would become more and more prosperous.

With precious little understanding of economics, I was one of the sceptics who felt that something would sooner or later prick the bubble, and the whole late-twentieth-century economic edifice would come tumbling down.  It seems, I am sad to say, to be happening.

And as philosophers debate, and protestors protest the graspingness of it all, I sense that we return to the fundamental questions that led a century and a half ago to the various economic theories our modern world was based on, and amid the confusion humanity tries to rebuild its  systems.

So far we have been relatively lucky in South Africa. A third world economy where mining, agriculture and basic production, rather than services and sophisticated consumer demands are the order, we have not felt the extremes of the meltdown. Yet.

But I am beginning to wonder if the science-fiction possibility I have considered often in the past – of the world becoming an inhospitable and unmanageable place – is  not perhaps becoming true. If being on this farm, in this climate, with these people, is not perhaps going to make it possible to survive on the chickens we keep and the vegetables we grow.

Then I laugh and shrug it off. No. I shrug and laugh it off, and think ‘Why, yes, it might be ten percent true in the years to come, or even twenty. The world economy is going to have to become simpler, and self-sufficiency more desirable, and every man and woman on this planet is going to have to adapt to the changes in some way. And whatever those changes are, I’d rather face them here than anywhere else in the world. With him who is going to live with me and be my love.”

 

Part 2 IN FOLLY RIPE IN REASON ROTTEN

Marlowe’s poem which formed the subject of my previous post might never have been as famous as it is, had not Sir Walter Raleigh – he of the tobacco and other taurobanding adventures – not written a rather cynical but very clever reply from the beloved who is asked to share this rural idyll…

 

“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh ~

If all the world and love were young,

And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move

To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold

When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,

And Philomel becometh dumb;

The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields

To wayward winter reckoning yields;

A honey tongue, a heart of gall,

Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,

Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies

Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten-

In folly ripe, in reason rotten…

…But could youth last and love still breed,

Had joys no date nor age no need,

Then these delights my mind might move

To live with thee and be thy love.

Next up: a 20th century response and vague ramblings about a new world order (or disorder) approaching…

For more info on these poems, read the interesting blog entry here.

 

Part 1 COME LIVE WITH ME AND BE MY LOVE

This is the season above all other when the feel of “isn’t nature perfect, let’s just ignore the world and its worries and be outside” is dominant… Besides, I have other reasons to be thinking of this poem …

(from Christopher Marlowe’s “The passionate shepherd to his love” 1599)

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies…

… If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love.

The love’s reply, by Sir Walter Raleigh, and a more modern comment, awaits another post…

 

COME ON IN–THIS IS OPEN HOUSE!

With those words a radio program from my youth called ‘Open House’ started week after week. I remember nothing of it, I guess there was a visitor who then shared stories and favourite music. Anyway – we’ve had open house at Sequoia!

The week-long Haenertsburg Spring Festival started on Saturday. We were ready – for the first time we were officially open to day visitors and we had three cottages to let. The signage went up last week, and all three cottages were fully booked for the weekend.

The post box next to the information board is made of thick solid copper plate. When Louis bought his house ten years ago and threw it out, painted with peeling black and white paint, I claimed it. It has finally been put to (more or less) the use I envisaged for it: I don’t charge an entrance fee, but the pictures top left on the board are of our Rotary Club’s projects, and I request that a donation to the club be put in the box. Count after two days: just on 200 rand, which is only about half of what I would have got if I’d charged an entrance fee… Come on people – give! On the information board there also are maps and information sheets, and a pouch with business cards.

The ‘Boiling Pot’ in its final incarnation. The pots I bought for the four arms of the cross looked hopelessly small and out of scale. So we constructed the bench you see in the above photos for them and the four corners became merely textural changes, contained by painted galvanised plate. As so often happens, simplicity was the answer!

On Saturday the dogs and I got to take a proper walk for the first time in days. I HAD to photograph visitors to the garden… moments later I discovered that the couple behind this lady were good friends from Johannesburg – last year’s Rotary District Governor (like the annual regional president) and his wife. What a lovely surprise!

But it is spring, and I guess I owe you a few wow pictures of spring on the mountain – so here goes!

Up in the arboretum some azaleas demonstrate why we are most famous, despite all the other joys we offer throughout the year, for our spring display of azaleas and blossoms. Mateczka’s joy was entirely related to our walk, and had little to do with aesthetic appreciation  (I think…)

More subtle, but infinitely more precious are moments like this…

This Japanese maple by the water’s edge has the most delicate of red leaves in spring. Within less than a month they are green like those of its neighbour. But for now, fleetingly, the delicacy of their colour is the most beautiful sight on Sequoia!

Let us return to the arboretum, where the view over the garden includes the wisteria in the Anniversary Garden, going fortissimo now, and an ever expanding number of trees whose  leaves are showing their first sparkling green.

Postscript; This was written on Monday evening. By now it is Wednesday evening. I have completely lost the ability to get onto the internet on the computer on which my blog-writer is installed So I had to come in to school where I can connect it to the school’s network in order to post. And Tuesday and Wednesday just sped past… My new life will include new internet at whatever price. I better start investigating!

 

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!

 

Coloured foliage, and an update to an old post

Going through my blog to get the feel of reading it as a unit, I realised that I had left out a photograph in my 30 September ‘Spring Kicks In’ post. Do go take a look at it; it shows the view across the water to my cottage as the Acer palmatum atropurpureum comes into silvery leaf.  I wrote about it, but never posted the photo.

Talking of coloured foliage led me to one of this week’s shots. It is of the plant association I am most proud of in my garden.

Flanking the path at the start of the axis down past the Ellensgate Garden are a pair of pungent junipers with lovely blue-grey foliage, not so ungreen as to be cold or dull. They are I would say Juniperus x media ‘Blaauw’ – or as close to it as I have ever been able to identify any garden conifer. Planted hard up against it – too hard at the moment as the junipers needs careful cutting back – is a particularly fine Prunus cerasifolia nigra. In South Africa no attempt is ever made to identify cultivars – in fact few nurseries do more than lump them together under Prunus nigra, the Black Plum. However each of my 7 or so plants is distinctly different, with flowers of different sizes and leaves of different shades. I found this one in some now forgotten nursery and was immediately struck by the small, lacquered leaves of an intense wine red. I’ve paired it with Berberis thunbergii ‘Rose Glow’ , just coming into leaf in the photo. Next to the berberis is one of the Abelia cultivars that were launched with great fanfare a few years ago, but have since seemingly disappeared – low-growing with a palish leaf with yellow and pink colorations. Finding its name would be a mission. Below the juniper is the Abelia grandiflora ‘Francis Mason’ hedge which masks the triangle of brickwork where the Ellensgate Garden is built up. This is the most successful and effective yellow-leaved hedging shrub in my climate, although Durantha ‘Sheena’s Gold’ is used more freely in the warmer parts of South Africa. Below that the willow of Alfred’s Arches, Salix caprea, is coming into leaf.

The foreground is one of the most neglected and satisfying parts of the garden. It lies above the wall and next to the steps leading down the axis. Given over to self-seeding annuals, it is seldom without something of interest and often magnificent. We started the year with a wonderful assortment of Nemesias now a little overshadowed by the green growth of early summer flowerers; no wait – the Namaqualand Daisies (Dimorphotheca sinuata, but no-one would have a clue what you were referring to here!)  flowered from late winter and a few are still in bloom – cheerful sunny orange daisies. Cornflowers are coming along, and opium poppies are growing nicely. My all-time favourite, near-species Nicotiana elata add white, moody mauves and deep red; their seed has been nurtured in the family for over fifty years. By high summer the zinnias will be a show. Occasionally we pull out the spent flowers but only after they have seeded. Studying the content of the waist-high bed makes a wonderful last stop on a walk, before climbing the steps to the front door.