Drowning in Roses

Strawberries and zuccini

Lobelia, pansies and borage

Nepeta "Six Hills Giant", lavender, artemesia

Icebergs

The front garden has repaid all my effort this year a thousand-fold. Bees and butterflies buzz and flutter amidst a tumbling profusion of miniature, bush and standard roses as well as catmint, pansies and cosmos. The sea-foam roses are as frothy as their name suggests and they are happily drowning the dying daffodil leaves I wrote about in my last post. 

A couple of years ago I planted lemon-scented geranium next to the front gate. The plant is not remarkable in its beauty, but the idea was that one would release the intoxicating lemonade scent when brushing past the leaves. Unfortunately violent crushing, rather than elegant brushing, was required to release the scent. I left the geranium where it was, despite the failed experiment and it took over that area of the garden with its straggly, springy stems. I pulled it out last weekend and transferred the lavender grosso from the back garden as a substitute. I also planted some pale blue, pink and white petunias. Vita would be horrified. I'm fairly confident she would hate petunias. 

Lavender Grosso and petunias 

About a month ago I sowed some heirloom tomato seeds I found that were out of date. They all germinated, so I have planted them out in a pot and in the back rose garden with a some basil seedlings. I removed most of the pomegranate tree a few weeks ago because it did nothing and threw one of the roses in the shade. I left a little bit, which is still growing and I will train a small tree. The formerly overshadowed rose, a pale pink, very droopy David Austin, is now flowering for the first time.

Die, daffodils, die

My husband is horrified by the title of this post, as daffodils are his favourite flowers. I love them too, but I don't love them dying a long and grisly death all over my lovely spring blooms. The problem is, you can't cut the leaves back or tie them up until they are well and truly brown and dead, according to Googleculture. Daffodils gather lots of nutrients for flowering the next year as the plant dies. So, it's best just to camoflage them with annuals. They are ready to remove when you pull the leaves and they come out easily. You can give them a feed then, too.

Dying daffodils remind me of those messy women you see at this time of year staggering and splatting at the races. 

Did I mention I killed most of the parsley seedlings a few weeks ago by planting them out in almost pure cow manure? Well I did. I waited a bit and then spread some potting mix over the top and planted the cottage blue salvia seedlings in the same spot today. Here are some of the pink roses that have started blooming:

Cecil Brunner 

Bonnica 

Mary Rose 

Pale pink Iceberg

Sharifa Asma 

Pinks

I've had a big weekend. Once upon a time that meant too much stolly and bolly and a hangover to match. Now it means hours of crouching in the dirt planting seedlings, pulling out weeds and creating eons of bad karma by squishing aphids on rosebuds.

Parsley for tabbouli and salsa. Theoretically. Probably I will just look at it and pick a spring or two to chuck on top of veges when I remember. 

These pansies have been thriving for months. Something is eating lots of them and I deadhead them regularly and either of those things is promoting lots of new flowers. 

Pinks

I bought some dianthus chinensis x barbatus seedlings called 'Devotion'.  Also known as sweet william, pinks, gillyflower, cottage pink, carnation and clove pinks, Shakespeare called them "nature's bastards" in A Winter's Tale, perhaps because of the ease with which they hybridise. A friend once told me the purest white in nature is a white carnation. I'm not sure if that's true but it's a nice idea. 

I sowed some more cosmos, this time pink, red and white ones from Fothergills called 'Sensation Mixed'. 

http://mrfothergills-seeds-bulbs.com.au/Cosmos-Sensation-Mixed.html

Calla Lilies or Zantedeschia aethiopica are a new bulb for our garden. They are native to east Africa and their natural habitat is river banks and damp areas, so we'll see. Will have to try and keep them damp so they at least have a chance. Anyway, I planted one bulb called 'Romeo', which will be pink in the front garden and a yellow one called 'Florex Gold', which sounds like a dangerous chemical, in the back garden. 

Calla lily bulb

http://www.gardenexpress.com.au/calla-lily-romeo/

Give Fruit a Chance

Impetuosity when gardening equals failure and dejection. Actually, impetuosity in life often equals failure and dejection. But this is a gardening blog, not a philosophy blog, so I will stick to seedlings. Today I planted out a multitude of Queen Anne's Lace, Nigella and Blue Lace Flower seedlings. Most had developed true leaves, but some still only had their seed leaves, so who knows whether they will survive the trauma of being transplanted. I thought about waiting until they were bigger to give them a better chance and then thought, what the hell.

I also cleared some grass away from the peach and an apple tree, fertilised each of them with a kilo of rose food, watered the fertiliser in and mulched them. The peach did not fruit at all last year, hopefully this year it will, so I can wander out in January, pick random fruit that I have failed to protect with a net and then throw them in the compost, having been half-eaten by birds and inhabited by insects. The forget-me-nots are blooming, as are the azaleas, jasmine, lavendar and daisies.

Forget-me-not

Bluebells 

Bluebells always remind me of Lord Denning, who began his judgment in Hinz v Berry [1970] 2 QB 40 with, "It happened on April 19, 1964. It was bluebell time in Kent". I have always been thankful for that segue.

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/bluebells-in-kent-a64581/

Nasturtiums

Growing up in Mosman, nasturtiums (Tropeolum majus) were something that just were in the landscape. Tumbling over garden walls and scrambling over the ground in parks and gardens, I never thought of anyone actually planting them, let alone that there were different cultivars. The round leaves are a nice, peppery addition to a salad and the flowers are pretty and edible, too. When I was a child I loved sucking the nectar from the base of the flowers and eating the occasional leaf when I was playing in the garden.

They self seed easily, hence thinking they were a weed as a child. Actually, they probably are classed as a weed. Nasturtiums are originally from South America.

Here is a blue violet, with lobelia and borage in the background. Nasturiums would look great with these colours, but I don't allow any yellow or orange in that part of the garden except for the odd daffodil.

The sun is finally peaking out after a whole weekend of rain. I managed to weed the back rose bed where the nasturtiums grow, along with some blue Triteleia that I bunged in in about April 2013 after I found the bulbs neglected and sprouting in a bag in the potting area. 

Next week I hope to remove the grass from the base of the apple and citrus trees, fertilise them and mulch them and you never know, maybe we'll be eating our own apples in autumn. 

Stupid things I did in the garden today

I accidentally almost ripped out a lavander that was already stressed because it hadn't been watered for ages. I trod on another lavander and snapped the biggest stem. And I put weeds that had gone to seed in the compost.

On a brighter note, the some of the lace flower seeds have germinated and the blue part of the garden is coming along. I added a borage officianalis. I sowed salvia 'Cottage Blue' seeds, cosmos and Italian parsley. The salvia and cosmos will look gorgeous together. I sowed most of the seeds in trays, but sprinkled some around the new climbing iceberg, because I have to water that every day for six weeks, so the cosmos seeds will be kept damp enough to germinate. This is assuming I remember/can be bothered watering the Iceberg every day. Big assumption.

14 January 2012

 The lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso' was not the best choice for a hedge lavander, because it is quite small and since I think I killed two of them today, I might move the rest and replace them with a larger lavander or even something entirely different.

31 August 2014

Icebergs and artemesia

Bought and planted two Artemesia arborescens 'Powis Castle' ($11), commonly known as wormwood, from which absinthe is made. It needs regular pruning to keep it tidy and should be cut back to base in winter. It can be propogated from hardwood cuttings. I bought it for it's silver foliage.

Powis Castle is in Wales, by the way.

The garden is ready for spring. The man at the rose shop talked me out of buying blood and bone and dynamic lifter for the roses and convinced me to buy "Better Bloom" instead. Fifty dollars for 10kg and $55 for Lucerne Hay for mulch, so it was a very expensive day.

Artemesia in the foreground. The scrubby, pathetic looking thing at the back is a lavander that was overshadowed by a rosemary hedge and didn't get enough sun or water. I can't bring myself to pull it out. 

Mulched with Lucerne Hay and ready for spring. 

I also planted a climbing Iceberg ($20), probably a bit far from the fence. The rose was bare-rooted and first I soaked the roots in a weak solution of Seasol, then planted with some well-rotted cow manure and soil and wet the soil until it was like a slurry. This removes any air-pockets around the roots. I am supposed to give it nine litres (a watering can full) of water daily for six weeks and fertilise in about three weeks time.