Our front garden has a mind of its own

Well here we are, almost one year after our great Front Garden Makeover of 2023, and my brilliant plans have not quite worked out how I planned, but I'm fascinated to see what happens next anyway.

You see, the problem is that our front garden has a mind of its own. It is doing what it wants to do, not what I want it to do, and it's looking pretty interesting anyway. Let me explain ...

This is the scene this morning, late August 2024. The main star of the show, the Corymbia 'Dwarf Orange' is growing rapidly and happily. And the easy-care green groundcover has spread to all corners of the space. So what's the problem? It's the wrong groundcover!

A wider angle view shows the carpet of green in context, but instead of being the creeping thyme that I searched for, bought and planted, it is almost entirely made of the native violets which I thought I had eradicated prior to the whole makeover starting. This area was once all bare dirt. Click on this link to get see the naively hopeful beginnings of my 2023 planting plan. It seemed like such a good plan, too!  

But I must not dwell on life's minor disappointments too much, as the great news is that the Corymbia 'Dwarf Orange' tree is going gangbusters and feels and looks like it's growing every day. That red new growth is such a cheerful sight; fills me with hope.

This is what I am hoping for (this is a late 2023 photo, not a 2024 one). Lots of dazzling orange blooms set against that darkish green eucalyptus style foliage. (Eucalyptus? you ask? Yes, many Eucalypts have been renamed Corymbia for some reason known only to botanists with PhDs.)

So, my big unanswered question at this stage is ... what happens next? All of the creeping thyme I planted is still there, still alive, with little bits of creeping thyme foliage poking through the carpet of native violets. So will the creeping thyme flower this spring? I don't know. I hope so.

Down by the front gate is the best chance of creeping thyme flowers bursting into bloom. This is a variety called 'Bergamot' and it has mauve-purple flowers. The native violets haven't swamped the bergamot like they have in most other areas.

It would be great to have splashes of purple-mauve, purpley-red and crimson flowers jazzing up the white-and-purple flowers of the native violets. At best it could be riotous, but more likely it will look like a messy painter's palette.

In the meantime, there is one more flower show that passers by in the street can enjoy as they walk past. The New Zealand Christmas Bush (Metrosideros) that occupies a pot beside the low front verandah wall is blooming better than ever before. 

I know why this has happened. I'm paying more attention to this plant, because I'm visiting our front garden more often to check on progress on the makeover, and while I'm there I water this pot, clip off dodgy looking bits and scatter around some slow-release fertiliser.
 

It's shameful to admit that I have neglected this lovely shrub over previous years, but it's true. My main focus is on our back garden, so "out of sight out of mind" played a part in its neglect, as I simply forgot to water it often enough. But not any more. 

The pot is in a spot that gets morning sun only, just a few hours. Also, the side passage cops a whole winter full of chilly southerly breezes, so it's by far the coldest part of the property, but this tough little shrub doesn't mind wintry winds. Its varietal name is 'Fiji Fire' and that reflects the fact that Metrosideros can be found on many Pacific islands, not just lovely, often cool New Zealand.

As for the front garden having a mind of its own, it reminds me of a great song called "My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own", written by Butch Hancock and performed by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who along with Butch and Joe Ely formed the legendary Flatlanders band from Lubbock, Texas ...

"My mind's got a mind of its own
It takes me out a-walkin' when I'd rather stay at home
Takes me out to parties when I'd rather be alone
My mind's got a mind of its own."

So, my garden has a mind of its own, or at least the native violets do. They're in charge of this makeover, not me! So, once the riddle of what happens when it's time for the surviving bits of creeping thyme to bloom through the native violets is solved, I'll post an update of my update here. Stay tuned!

Kiwi rescue

"I think its days are over" ... "eeeeew, not a happy chappy" .... "needs a bigger pot" .... These were just some of the perfectly accurate comments my sad-looking potted New Zealand Christmas bush attracted two years ago. It was thin, bedraggled, its leaves dull and sparse. It was a wreck and it was, I am ashamed to admit, all due to my prolonged neglect. But now, two years later, it's back in good health, like it should have been all along.

The only thing my NZ Christmas bush now lacks is good timing. It always flowers in spring, rather than at Christmas, but there's nothing I can do about that. It lives down the side of our house, and one of its main jobs is to hide the view of our garbage wheelie bins from passers-by. It's not alone in that task, as there are also some large cane begonias in pots doing a similarly good screening job.

Rescuing Mr Sad & Bedraggled was a fairly simple task. First step, get out the secateurs and cut off everything that is spindly and unhealthy. So that meant cutting off a lot of stuff. One simple technique I use is to keep on cutting stems until I can see green wood. If a cut reveals dry and dodgy looking wood, cut some more. Once you see green signs of life, there is hope.

The second technique is to give the potted plant lots and lots of seaweed solution. I just made up a watering can of it (here in Australia my shed has two containers of seaweed product in two major brand names: Seasol and eco seaweed — but there are others). Seasol is already a liquid, while eco seaweed is a dry flaky powder. Both products are diluted in water. I kept on applying a 9-litre can of seaweed solution every week for the first month or two, and scaled back to monthly when it started to show some new growth.

This pot and plant has got to the stage that it's too big and heavy for me to lift any more, so I couldn't use the alternative method, which is to soak the whole plant, pot and all in a very large trug of seaweed solution for an hour or three. Ideally, try have the liquid covering the top of the soil level. This totally re-wets ultra-dry soil, which is why it's the ideal treatment option.

This might be the best option, but it's not practical with this big pot and my dodgy old back. If you are thinking it might work for your sick plant, and you can manage lifting the pot, etc, the best product to use is Seasol Super Soil Wetter and Conditioner. Just follow the packet directions in mixing it up, but here's a tip: don't add the product before you add the water, as it foams up like dishwashing detergent. Add the product to the water, towards the end of filling. I've recommended this treatment to friends with sick potted plants, and the success rate has been very good.

So, while I've been rabbiting on about products and watering cans and trugs, I've also been showing you some photos of how worthwhile the whole project has been. NZ Christmas bush (Metrosideros) are beautiful, tough and well worth growing in the ground, if you have space, or in pots if you don't have enough space. 

I feel a bit guilty about neglecting it and letting it get bedraggled, but as it is now one of my star patients in the hospital ward of my garden, I hereby promise never to neglect it again!


PS: Note to Auto-Correct Spell Checker Software Thingy ... When I type in the word "trug" please do not auto-correct it to "drug"! It gives my readers a totally misleading impression about me, and my methods. Thank you.

Springing open

It is nice having a full set of senses – you know, smell, sight, touch, taste and hearing – but when it's spring if you were a poor unfortunate down to just one sense or two, you'd definitely know that spring has arrived.

Take smell, for example. It's the worst one to start with because your sense of smell would tell you that this keen gardener has sprinkled far too much chicken poo under his citrus trees, and it is taking days for the farmyard stench to die down. I know this might seem a tad unsympathetic, but bad luck! The limes and lemons need a feed ...

So let's move on that far more delightful sense of sight, and I'll show you some nice photos of spring flowers doing their thing in our garden at the moment.

Now, this one is an official "Pammy plant". It's her potted Pieris japonica, and it seems like the position we have for it in morning sun, with afternoon shade, is just what the Zen master ordered. Though it's Pam's plant it is of course my sacred duty to keep it happy, and so far it hasn't been too onerous a task, even if it remains a heavy responsibility.

A much lighter and cheerier story is the rebirth of our potted New Zealand Christmas bush (Metrosideros), which always flowers months ahead of the baby Jesus' birthday. A year ago this pot plant looked like it was gone for all money, so I cut off the top three-quarters of it, repotted the stump into fresh mix, plied it with Seasol and soothing vibes, and like Lazarus, it's back!

And it's not just a couple of flowers, either. The whole thing is covered in buds, and we're back in the Kiwi flower business.

And yes, my favourite flowering plant in the whole garden is doing its thing again. Last time I did a blog, which was a month ago, it was about this Scadoxus and its little clump of babies, so I thought I'd slip it down here to Page Five of this blog, just so I don't seem too obsessive about them. But the flowers are all about 90% open right now, and the show is on again.

You can always rely on our succulent patch to have something interesting or weird (or both) happening, and right now the yellow blooms of our Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' are the star attraction. 

Finally, good old Geranium 'Big Red' is in bloom not quite "again" ... it's more like Big Red never stops blooming, and so it's "still" in bloom. Every now and then it has a pause-ette for a breather but then it's back in action pumping out the red highlights in no time. What a wonderfully healthy, fuss-free, colourful and happy thing it is. 


And so that's an update on the beginning of spring here. I know that I won't be able to resist showing you more of the Scadoxus once the whole tribe has opened up, and the Pieris japonica deserves a posting, too. I'm hoping to lift my current sluggish rate of one post per month back up to a more respectable one per week, but no promises, mind you. I kind of like this "monthly" pace, it suits my semi-retired lifestyle.

My kiwi gatekeeper

As Sydney's climate is warmer than New Zealand's, it's no great surprise to find that the popular kiwi plant called 'NZ Christmas Bush' is in flower here already, in spring. It's doing a great job for me in my ugly side passage, where all the various wheelie-style garbage bins and the air-conditioner unit live. From the street, all passers-by see is a tall potted plant with green-blue foliage topped with fuzzy red pom poms. And that was the plan, and each year it's working better than the last.

Here's the top half – the showtime section – of my kiwi gatekeeper this morning. This year's blooming is better than last year's, which was better than the year before, etc, etc.

Standing back at street level looking down the side passage, and the cover-up is complete. Instead of boring bins you see greenery, and beyond the Christmas bush the greenery of the angel wing begonias.

The flowers are little starbursts of hundreds of fine crimson needles, each tipped with a tiny golden bobble.

Though it's covered in flowers there are plenty more to come, just waiting to burst from their little clusters of buds.

Caught in the act, the explosion of each flower is slow-spreading fire. Indeed, several cultivars of this plant, whose name is Metrosideros, have 'fire' in their name (such as 'Fiji Fire').

I've blogged about this lovely plant before, here. It's one worth recommending to people in similar climates for several reasons, apart from its beauty and hardiness. One big positive is that it is doing well in a lousy spot, with just partial morning sun from about 8am, and shade from about midday onwards. I know that these things also do well in full sun and they cope brilliantly with coastal spots full of salty sea spray, although that isn't an issue for me.

Mine is in a pot that has built-in pot feet, and I think good soil drainage is a reason it's happy. I also feed it slow-release plant food, which is ideal for anything in a pot, and I'm a good boy when it comes to watering it, too.

In return, it has never misbehaved, been attacked by pests or looked unwell. My only worry is that someone, a passer-by, will steal it some day. They'll need more than light fingers, though. It now weighs a ton!

Hiding the ugly bits

In my previous posting (about our two different and very pretty Christmas bushes) I thought about including a photo of the NZ Christmas bush in-situ, blocking for passers-by the less than wonderful view of our narrow side passage cluttered with colourful wheelie bins for garbage and recycling. As I went out this sunny morning to recycle even more empty festive season wine bottles and assorted newspapers, I couldn't help but admire how nice our cane begonia looks right now. The NZ Christmas bush has just a few scraps of flowers left, but I've overcome my reluctance to display my garden's 'ugly bits' due to the begonia's radiance, so here goes...

Happy in its spot: brief morning sun and cool afternoon shade all year. The cane begonia is in full flower now. It's just in a large pot but you never see much of the pot, so dense is the foliage. And, as you look down the side passage towards the street, you primarily just see the begonia, although there's only so much you can hide. An air-conditioner unit and a water heater reside here, too, but at least they're not what your eye is drawn towards.

It's covered in these clusters of yellow-centred pure white blooms.

The leaf shapes have their own charm, too, crinkled at the edges and always seemingly with a new leaf on the way.

Overall the effect is green and lovely and lush, and from our living room we look out the window to these tall canes of green and white occasionally moving in the eddies of wind that work their way down the narrow passage. I only feed these plants with slow-release pellets applied once a year in spring, although they do need a fairly steady supply of water – roughly every second day in summer, much less often in winter.

Here's the plant I call "Son of". While repotting mother begonia last year into a bigger pot I broke off some bits (the canes are a bit fragile to handle) so all the broken-off bits were unceremoniously poked straight into this spare pot of mix that was sitting around looking unemployed. Though it's not the best looking setting, what with the bins to the left and the wall-mounted ladder behind, the effect of this pot is a delight for me. That's my home-office window behind the pot, and in just one and a bit years the broken-off cuttings have roared along, and now my very limited window view is no longer of just yucky metal fencing – it's becoming much more green, white and full of swaying life.

Such has been the success of the cuttings that I'm striking more for some friends with a similar side passage problem at their house. All of these seem to have taken and are showing signs of leaf growth already. The pot of cuttings is sitting on the green recycling bin, as I want them to strike and start growing in the same position, which must be perfect for their needs.

Now, whizzing out to the view from the street, this is the NZ Christmas bush in action, blocking your view of the wheelie bin collection. One thing I really like about the black pot here is that it has built-in pot feet, which provide excellent soil drainage yet also make it easy to occasionally rotate the pot to ensure even growth on all sides.

If you rubber-neck around the side of the pot you can still barely see the bins, so this one plant does its view-blocking job very well.

Couldn't resist repeating a shot of the NZ Christmas bush bloom from the last posting, even though the plant has largely finished flowering now (well ahead of schedule, unfortunately, but in the cooler NZ climate it keeps to the festive flowering timetable a lot better).

Nevertheless, its foliage is quite handsome in its evergreen way, and dense enough to provide the cover-up which was its initial assignment in life.

Looking deeper into the property, the side passage ends at the corner where Pam's home office and art studio is. The dense, glossy green leaves of the Murraya paniculata provide a tidy backdrop of green (plus big flushes of sweetly orange-flower-scented white blooms in summer, especially a few weeks after a really good soaking of rain). Ghostly grey streamers of Spanish moss help to soften the look of the metal fence. Down at ground level a gaggle of pots hides the raised garden bed in which the Murraya grows. On the left are the bromeliads and a Spathiphyllum, which is utterly irresistble to snails. And on the right is the hardiest plant in the garden, a foxtail fern, which I think should be renamed Weedus indestructibilis. It never gets watered, fed, repotted, thought about or kissed by sunlight much for that matter, and it has thrived there for at least a dozen years or more.

Covering up the ugly bits might be as simple as putting something green and dense in front of them, but the problem is finding something which does the job year-round. I imagine in extremely cold climates it's virtually not on, so you'd resort to built screens if the ugly bits really bothered you, but in an evergreen place like Sydney it's possible to create living green screens. All it takes is a dense and tough enough plant to handle the conditions. Luckily in the cane begonia and the NZ Christmas bush I've found plants that not only grow densely, but also chime in with some extraordinarily pleasing flowers, too. And all with just a couple of hours of morning sun a day. Great performers!