Best sunflower ever!

My garden feels a little unrewarding because building's going on - but I'll have a garage and roofed deck at the end of the mess, and the horrid structures in the garden will finally go. In the meantime there are building materials everywhere, and the kikuyu is creeping back through the lawn...


So this is a small view, with the mess edited out - and the wonderful sunflower! I planted seeds from so many packets I don't know which it is - but i have certainly never had such a beauty ever before. The main flower is resolutely facing the wall - all of these are the secondary ones, with masses more to come.

There are a few Cupani sweet peas on the trellis - I had masses of seeds saved but they're a bit old and hard to germinate, and they don't seem to be for sale any more. I hope I can get a few from these.

Beset by bunnies!

The big white one is a California Giant, and his name is Baba Ganouch. He belongs to the Singhs next door, and has got out - maybe because the other one, who lives over the road, seems to have moved in! Neighbours are all talking - we've all delivered him home but he never stays. What to do with an urban bunny hangin' out?

Vege garden looking great

Raised beds certainly have it for looking charming! Even if I spill black earth out onto the white paths. The effect of the touch of colour and the veges looks like something out of a magazine.

A lot of the plants are to attract "beneficials" (desirable insects) to the garden : phacelia, feverfew, nigella, echinacia. They are flourishing madly and need to be elsewhere... The space isn't huge, and it needs to be all in use for veges -

I won't post a photo of the garden beds I have just filled up with compost - it was a huge job but they look fairly unexciting until they have more in them. Camellias and Michaelia but small, and not too much else yet. I am so impatient for this garden to feel like a real garden, but it's getting there - the vege garden does!

A pretend garden

... but I hope it will become a real one in a while. I put some compost and fertilizer on top of the lawn, and only dug the lawn at all when I planted some of the plants through my little garden layer. There is pretty much enough planted to fill the space, and the pots are to create the illusion. Sort of.

Ann & I went on a mission on Saturday and collected my new Hebes that I am going to use instead of the box - Green Gem - that I had planted already for my garden edge/hedge. For some reason I got them from Shed 16 in Drury, which is a bit of a way but a really nice place to go, and has all of the Camellia Haven camellias. They are H. Pinguifolia Sutherlandii and look a little bit rounder leafed than the ones I had. I'm going to keep them in groups - the difference I hope won't be too noticeable. We also went to Joy Plants in Bombay where Terry Hatch gave really generously of his time - and Ann bought her hedge plants. What a lovely garden day - we even went to Eden Garden, before we left town.

Other gardens (2)

and Janet's in Toronto

Other gardens (1)

Here is Deirdre's garden in California

Helga : a white frost

According to the man who came today to fix my wardrobe, all of Auckland looked like this, this morning - not just here, which is a bit of a dip. My nasturtium seedlings that were doing so well are sadly collapsed... I don't think about frost tenderness - there were only perhaps five frosts much lighter than this in 13 years at Balmoral Rd - the cold would have rolled down the hill.But see it's all clear along the wall? All that acanthus I grubbed out yesterday.... but left are a big heap of rocks - my next challenge. And of course, the weeds still to come.

Helga : a small essay on Acanthus mollis

Jack installing trellis (left) and Acanthus roots (above)

Its name ought to mean soft acanthus, I think. It is said to be the inspiration for the leaves on Corinthian columns. The leaves are shiny, large, and aesthetically pleasing. It features in lovely gardens in UK books and magazines. In volcanic soil in Auckland, New Zealand, it is a complete nightmare.

You can see a nice big clump of it to the left of Jack's ladder - there are plenty of pictures of it on the web already. Oyster plant, Bears' breeches. (Jack was installing the trellis yesterday - looks great!)
But do see the other picture. In my garden, the roots grow so large that one was as thick as a child's wrist and as long as her arm, and there are so many, even under clumps that I sprayed several times with Amitrole, that the whole space is full of them - almost no soil. I thought I would limit them by spraying, and by removing the flowers before they formed seeds - which spread with one of those trigger mechanisms when they are ripe - and maybe I did. But there are great solid plates 30-40cm or more across and these roots like triffids, and they are growing in under the fence and the concrete beyond it.

I shouldn't moan as it was a fabulous day after a frosty morning and I had the chance to spend a couple of hours in the garden attacking the acanthus, the roots of agapantus I had cut down earlier, and pulling creeper off the shed. I do wonder though how long I will have to keep after the acanthus as it creeps out from under the fence where I can't get to it. Maybe indefinitely. Ah, the New World; the subtropics.

Luke has been and chopped down the huge bouganvillea with the chain saw leaving a huge pile of foliage and branches filling the space between the gum tree and the house. I borrowed Wendy's electric chainsaw and tentatively and cautiously chopped a few branches all the time envisaging the thing slipping and slicing into my leg before you can blink. I spent most of the weekend feeding branches into the mulcher and closing my ears to Hugh's tirade about my conventionality, my thoughtlessness and my lack of consideration for the environment, the amount of electricity I was consuming etc. I persevered and had done two thirds when I managed to chop through the power cable with the loppers and throw all the safety switches in the shed and the house. It started raining then so was forced inside.

Daphne came and wandered around the garden and created a map of every major plant in the garden. She was inspired and anxious about the major changes to the garden structure by the removal of the bouganivillea. I am excited by the new possibilities opening up. It does mean that the rubbish between myself and the neighbour is exposed and must be dealt to. Hugh is dreaming of creating a croquet lawn, but it must be around my plantings. I am thinking of espaliered fruit trees. I must speak to the neighbour soon. Daphne is forcing me out of my comfort zone of just scrabbling at the garden and challenging me to think of the garden in new ways.
On Saturday evening a puriri moth came battering against the glass door, attracted by the light. It fell to the ground and immediately started laying its eggs on the deck. It is a creature of great beauty, but I couldn't help thinking of my citrus trees which are suffering from borer, which is the juvenile stage of the moth. Maybe its not true and each of those eggs doesn't have the potential to destroy a citrus tree.





The beautiful soft camelia is flowering. I used the macro setting on the camera which was probably a mistake as I've failed to capture its beauty.

I am amazed that my plum is sporting a plum at the most inappropriate time of the year when it couldn't manage it over the summer. Maybe I'll get to sample the Wilson's Early before the birds get it if it ripens.

Helga : how it was

These photos look much better than I thought it looked - especially the spring view which I took when I arrived. I really dislike the structures, and can't wait to see them out of the way!

Helga's bare beginnings

The basic framework is all that there is - but rather nice! The most structured kitchen garden I have ever had - but still needs trellis at the right and on the top of the fence, and a fence for grapes along the little strip on the left of the white path. Wonderful but far too pristine - needs some little pansies and calendulas and of course some more vegetables.

The rest of the back yard is also shaping up, though the carport and the shed must go... I have planted 5 camellias and 10 Buxus 'Little Gem' for hedges at the edge of the lawn, and have a whole lot of Little Gem cuttings in a propagator. And struggled with the weeds!
The trellis on the fence on the West side looks wonderful, and removes the sense of the neighbour buildings. Once my extra structures are gone, I hope the sense of the new garden will quickly take shape.
Helga

Melanie and Helga's shared garden stories : a new urban garden in Sandringham and an established garden in Waiheke

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