New Garden

Purple border, Sissinghurst, August 2013

Living in the White Garden at Sissinghurst has inspired me to get back into the garden. Before we went to Switzerland and England in August I had decided to replace the large garden bed outside our bedroom and replace it with a border and turf, which is more practical now I am working full-time.

The plan is to transplant the standard roses in the border, along with whatever shrubs and perennials that will also fit. I am going to do it bit by bit myself, rather than pay someone else to do it. Today I made a start, moving two buddleias from nearer the bedroom to a a spot behind the front fence, eventually the three bushes (one still to move) will make a hedge. I was going to pull the buddleias out, because even though they flower profusely, there are always a mixture of dead and fresh blooms on the plant and they can look scrappy.

Butterfly bush in Sissinghurst

I have always been ambivalent about purple flowers in the garden, because the effect can be dull and lifeless. The Purple Border at Sissinghurst, though, was stunning. The yellow rose-hips, purply-pink dahlias and dark leaves on the stone wall made a perfect, jewel-like combination.

Purple Border 

Stoned on cardamon

Do you know what a cardamon plant looks like? Or a Cinnamon tree? Or what turmeric actually is? I didn't either until I decided to have an edible garden. Then I began to think beyond the supermarket grocery aisle. Now I know that cardamon is a voracious beast that took me an hour to get out of my garden yesterday, but pulling it out was ok because of the sweet and spicy scent that enveloped me as I worked. My cardamom plant never flowered, so never produced pods, I think because the Sydney climate is not sufficiently tropical. Here is what the bottom of a cardamon plant looks like:

I started with one stem about two years ago and the bit you see is a quarter of what I chopped out. You can divide the stems and replant them and the plant grows very quickly, with little care, in shaded areas. It has lush green leaves and would suit a tropical garden. I am pulling mine out because I have decided to stick with a fernery at the side of our house. 

Scented gardens

A scented garden is lovely, brushing past fragrant foliage and inhaling delicious scents while sipping a cool drink in the twilight is the perfect way to end the day. Jasmine, gardenia and murraya all smell heavenly in the early evening and the white of the flowers glow in the dim light. 

I have planted cherry pie (heliotrope), lemon and rose scented geraniums and thyme around my front gate and mint near my front door, the idea being that ambrosial scents would waft enticingly around one as one wandered. I have found that merely brushing past a leaf does not produce the effect I had been hoping for and one has to be quite violent, stomping delicate thyme lawns and crushing leaves, to release the fragrant  and intoxicating oils. So I have decided to keep some cardamon, just so I can slash it down again and release its exotic scent. 

I spent about six hours in the garden yesterday, finishing the mediterranean garden, then clearing up my working area and removing tropical plants. Here is the almost finished mediterranean bit:

The empty black pots are standing in for more Japanese Box at the moment, I have to order some by mail. Behind the box hedge, at the bottom left of the photo, I will plant a hedge of lauris nobilis, a bay hedge. 

In addition to the initial expenditure, I bought another 15 x 20kg bags of Cowra White gravel (@$225), 39 x box hedge ($97.50). So the total cost was about $600. 

Incidentally, an edible garden and a sporadic gardener do not mix. Keeping up a vege patch is satisfying, but time consuming, especially organic gardening, so I have simplified the garden since I went back to work full-time. 

Semi-makeover 2 1 2012

The ex-vegetable garden now looks like this:

My last post (1 1 2012) showed how it looked yesterday and my plan, which has now changed a bit. I have taken out the marjoram and I am going to plant a small box hedge immediately above the lavender. I ended up getting English lavender from Swane's because they said they had French lavender, but when I got there the French lavender looked like what I thought was English lavender and visa versa. Anyway, because I was too impatient to wait for the weekend and go to Honeysuckle Cottage I ended up compromising. Doesn't matter, it looks fine. I just won't be able to make Chanel No 5.

I am now going to spread the white gravel under the lemon tree. I am also toying with the idea of whitewashing the exposed fence, brick-work and steps, but we are painting the house this year so I might wait.

So far it has taken 11 hours (not counting planning). Three hours clearing weeds, two hours shopping, six + hours laying weed mat and planting. Cost: $150 for the gravel and weed mat and $80 for the plants; six  lavender and one red geranium.

I have to decide whether to buy small tube-stock box at $3.30 per plant or larger plants, which will have an impact sooner. Having watched tiny peach and apple trees grow from tube-stock to productive plants in 4-5 years it's probably worth getting the smaller plants and watching them grow.

Bowral on Thursday and it's about the right time of year to take camellia cuttings from Mick's garden.

The more I look at the photo the more I think white-washing with lime is a must.

New Mediterranean Garden January 2012

I am going to turn this:

into this:

Actually, no I'm not. But the picture did inspire me, as does the New Year, to do something about my ramshackle former vegetable garden and make it habitable for something other than snakes and bees.

Here is my plan:

For this project I will need:

• Lots of white gravel
• Weed mat for under the white gravel so weeds don't grow though the gaps in the gravel. Newspaper doesn't work, even lots of it because it breaks down. I learned this the hard way. 
• 5-6 x French Lavender, "Grosso" or "Provence", which I will buy from Honeysuckle Cottage Nursery
• Red geraniums. I already have terracotta pots to put them in. 
• Various varieties of thyme, also to be bought from HCN, so I can plant a thyme carpet that will look like this:

9thymelawn.jpg

sequoiagardens.wordpress.com

• 
  
• A seat. I would like a Lutyens seat like this:
• A seat. I would like a Lutyens seat like this:
• 
  

http://www.andrewcrace.com/garden-furniture/garden-seats/five-seater-patio-benches/large-lutyens-seat.htm

But I will have to wait a bit and use my existing seats for the time being:

 One day I would also like a little fountain.

Now I am going to weed the area and transplant the star jasmine from one part of the garden to my new garden. I would like to plant a gardenia in the new garden, but the garden will have to survive on rain water pretty much and gardenias love lots of water, so I will just spray gardenia spray around the kitchen and pretend the scent is wafting in from the garden. 

Spring garden

15/10/10

Today I planted two eggplants, 'Bonica' and 'Fairy' something and a capsicum. I also sowed some mint and sage. When I was tootling about, picking up some sugarcane mulch, something caught my eye in the composting grass clippings-a potato! I put some potatoes in the clippings in Autumn and then watered them only when I remembered and they grew and I have enough now for a potato salad! Yay! I have also been harvesting the broad beans, silverbeet and carrots.

The more I harvest, the more I am inspired to grow out own food. It is so satisfying to wander out to the garden and choose the evening meal based on what it ready to pick, pluck or dig up.

I planted out the cosmos this morning around the base of two standard roses. I have reached a stage where I am maintenance weeding-a short-lived victory that I will not take for granted, the garden will run away from me once I am back into studying.

Last weekend I prepared lots and lots of box cuttings. My goal is to plant low borders around my garden beds-it defines them. I also did some cuttings of curry plant and the chilien Guava. I am unimpressed with that plant, having failed to tip prune it to promote bushiness, it has become leggy and pointless. If the cuttings fail I will ditch both plants, if they work, I will make cuttings out of both plants and ensure I prune them more diligently.

Here are three different white roses from the garden.

Blossom

2/10/10

Just read an old post from April, where I described removing jasmine from a cherry tree in Bowral. I worried the tree was beyond hope but the worry was needless, as this picture attests.

Before and after

2/10/10

Here are some before and after shots of a bit of garden next to my driveway. I planted a rose that is ailing-I thought it had died and I almost chucked it, but we'll see how it goes. I also planted a small May bush, taken from a Bowral cutting, a pink pelargonium and some lambs ears.

I am obsessed with geranium/pelargoniums at the moment. This morning T and I went to Geranium Cottage, in Dural, to buy some. I bought the pink one in the picture as well as a variegated scented one that will have mauve flowers and one with deep burgundy leaves. There were to be planted beside the drive as well, but I couldn't bare to have them tucked away where I will hardly ever see them so I think I will put them in the front garden somewhere.