The end of Autumn

Lamarque

Depending on how you count these things we are either at the start of winter now or coming to the end of autumn.

The Crimson Glory Vine has great autumn colours even in Perth

And it’s been a warm dry autumn here in Perth with the temperatures only now starting to drop, along with the leaves.

I can’t rave enough about the performance of Duchesse de Brabant

I got my camera out and have taken some photos of what’s in bloom around the garden.

A Darcey Bussel bud starts to open

With the warmth the roses are still blooming well

My Camellia in flower

William Shakespeare

Iceberg with a few hips

Young Lycidas, still only a young plant, is putting on a good display

Bold seduction

Sharifa Asma

My new rose, St Cecilia

The truly gorgeous Abraham Darby

Floribunda Bridal Pink in bud

And full flower

And that’s it – happy gardening!

Meet my new roses

Here it is, the start of a new year and with it the start of some really hot weather here in Perth and around the country. Temperatures have passed the 40°mark (that’s close to 110°F – whew!) and leaves and any flowers are well scorched. Luckily, at least in blogging terms, I still have some photos from spring to show you. So without further ado… come and see my new roses for this season.

The first one is Lavender Pinocchio. Look at those beautiful smoky tones and exposed stamens.

The flowers fade to pink with age. A floribunda rose, this rose has already been a good performer, flowering fairly continuously since spring.

The next one is a rose I bought which was mislabelled. I actually wanted to buy another Belle Story so I was disappointed, however it’s been a strong grower and put on a heavy flush of flowers in spring.

I’m thinking it has to be an English rose. Could it be Lilian Austin?

This is hybrid tea, Atomic Blonde. It has only put on this one flower this season.

This is the second time I have planted a Jude the Obscure, this time in a much milder position. It looks like a much stronger plant and has put on a decent number of blooms.

I created a new garden bed especially to add the next two roses. After reading my neighbour’s guest post I had to have Moonbeam and it has proved to be quite a prolific flowerer, with two good flushes so far.

And I also bought Martine Guillot (a name I absolutely massacre every time I say it). 

This rose has been on my wish list since seeing it in an Australian House and Garden magazine a couple of years ago. 

It seems to be growing strongly but has only had one flush of flowers.

Apart from that, I also bought a climbing Duchesse de Brabant and some other repeat favourites.

Happy Gardening!

Hello Roses!

Here in Perth we’re in the middle of the first rose flush of spring, and this year we are having a good season.

Red Pierre looking truly spectacular

So often it can be spoiled by wet or too cool weather, but not this year.

David Austin’s ‘Munstead Wood’

This year the warm weather at the end of winter has meant that most of the roses are looking well foliaged for a change.

Named for the ballerina, David Austin’s ‘Darcey Bussell’

Hybrid tea, ‘Bonfire’. The petals turn red in the sunshine as it ages

This is hybrid tea, ‘Granada’

You might remember, back in autumn, I was talking about moving my ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ rose. Well here it is in its new home and flowering much better already.

This one is hybrid tea, ‘Radox Bouquet’

The thorny, but beautiful ‘Gertrude Jekyll’

And finally, another Austin rose, Scepter’d Isle.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge

Put on the Barry White music and dim the lights, today’s post is about Seduction

and Bold Seduction… well, the roses anyway.

These roses are very free-flowering floribundas, Bold Seduction being the deeper coloured, stiffer and thornier stemmed, more upright sport of Seduction.

They are generally the first to put on their spring flush and they’re right on cue this year with a display that somehow always makes me think of meringue.

Unfortunately Seduction doesn’t photograph as well as they could in the landscape and look more washed out towards white than they actually are. And the truth is in the warmer weather they could almost pass for a white rose anyway, but the buds show the beautiful soft pink edges all year round. In the heat, Bold Seduction will pale off to soft pink to be mistakeable for Seduction at its best. 

Of course, that they are actually flowering heavily throughout the heat of summer is a huge plus.

Seduction makes a brilliant standard because of its naturally rounded shape

and also looks great as mass planted bushes to create an informal hedge.

Bold Seduction has a far more upright vase type shape.

In my experience, these roses will thrive in any position in the garden. I’ve got them along the eastern fence so they get all the afternoon sun plus the heat of the fence itself and I’ve got one planted at the front which gets pretty much only a couple of hours of morning sun around Christmas (more later as the sun goes further north), and a bush in a position that falls somewhere between the two extremes. All of them flower profusely and thrive in Perth conditions.

They are definitely worth finding a spot for.

Happy Gardening!

Winter in the Garden

It’s winter here in Perth, the leaves have dropped, the last of the roses are blooming…

Floribunda, Seduction

 rose hips are the reward for laziness not dead heading, here on ‘Heritage’

 

and some of the native shrubs are flowering

 

This is Grevillea Olivacea, so called because its leaves are strikingly similar to an olive tree’s. There are various colours, this is the red form. This is actually a really good shrub – large and fast growing (I prune it).

 

Grevillea flowers also come in different forms and these ones are ‘spider flowers’.

 

This is a dwarf tea tree which grows to under a metre (3 feet) high. These flowers dry off to form hard black seed pods which I’ve seen parrots come into the garden for. Don't they have lovely faces...

The (Surprising) Survivors

Let off the fireworks! Today marks 7 years since I moved into this house and inherited a garden that was an almost blank canvas. And what better way to celebrate than a post about the plants that were here all those years ago. Hmmm, come to think of it there must be better ways, but for now…

Some of the plants that had survived 5 years of neglect, 3 because the house was empty and then 2 as a rental, surprised me.  And with rising water prices and the ever present threat of drought and severe watering restrictions, having a garden that will survive and hopefully sail through a dry summer is on my mind at least, and probably yours as well.

Here is the list:

Natives

Australian native plants have a reputation for being drought tolerant. This big eucalypt is home to a small flock of pink and grey galahs that come in at dusk every evening to roost.

 

There are also several varieties of bottle brush and there was a Robin Gordon grevillea which I had to take out because the garden area it was in had been raised above the level of the rest of the garden and I wanted to bring it down to one level. I planted a new one in the back yard but it was a cat-feeder. The neighbouring cats hid beneath it and waited for birds to come in to feed and then sprang out at them. It would be the stuff of bird-nightmares I’m sure. I tried surrounding the plant with mesh but they dug under it, pushed it up and crawled inside. Eventually I decided the death toll was too high and shovel pruned it.

Lavender

 

There were a lot of these and they were thriving.

Agapanthus and the unknown iris

 

A big clump of these beauties sits alongside the driveway. I love agapanthus with their beautiful strappy leaves and pale purple flowers in early summer, they always look good.

 

Along with them is some sort of short clumping grassy evergreen iris. I have had a shot at identifying it with the aid of my Botanica’s Pocket Gardening Encyclopedia (it’s a little large for any pocket I have), and I think it could be Iris unguicularis, the Algerian Iris, which is from northern Africa. Its blue iris flowers often sit well inside the foliage so it’s a little unfortunate for display.

These all sit in a position where they get a full day’s sun in winter and morning sun in summer with afternoon shade provided by the plane trees planted by my Gardening Neighbour (thankyou, thankyou, thankyou).  A bit of shade helps everything.  The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, they say, the second best is now.

Mandarin and Lemon tree

It was a surprise to find that citrus trees were drought tolerant but there they were - a fruiting mandarin and lemon tree. The lemon tree was from the rootstock and had big thorns and pithy fruit. I have replaced it with a Washington navel now. The mandarin stays although I have trouble keeping its foliage green. I suspect because it is too shaded –I planted a fig tree close by which has grown to create too much shade in the cooler months. It seems to also be growing on its own rootstock and has stayed a small tree to around 5 foot. I reckon it’s an Emperor variety – it ripens a little later in the season and has puffy skin. The fruit are a good size and flavour.

Poinsettia

 

Probably bought as a Christmas decoration and then planted in the garden, it’s an attractive small tree with the flowering bracts in autumn and early winter. Birds and bees love it as well.

Bird of Paradise

Planted under one of the plane trees and no doubt with heavy competition for all things soil related is a huge clump of the bird of paradise plant (strelitzia). I really like the bright and colourful flowers on this plant and its tropical feel.

Roses

 

Roses have only recently been promoted as being drought tolerant, probably since the severe water restrictions in the eastern states a few summers ago when roses were the survivors. There were some in this garden as well and I continue to see roses in neglected gardens that thrive even in the heat. Are they drought tolerant? Darn right!

Bamboo

 

There’s a clumping bamboo in the back corner that was an original plant. I continued to neglect it for the first summer I was here and I’ve got to say it didn’t look good, but come the cooler temperatures in autumn and some rain it sprang back like you wouldn’t believe.

Nandina

 

The nandina, the sacred bamboo, with its lovely fern-like foliage doesn’t look like the sort of plant that would be drought tolerant, but it sits in a very harsh spot against the eastern fence and suffers only minor scorching. It appears in the background of some of the rose shots. Here it is showing a bit of autumn colour and its red berries.