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!

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.

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!

Christmas southern style

As an immigrant nation of transplanted peoples, Australia is still rapidly changing and adapting the Northern Hemisphere's Christmas traditions to suit our climate, way of life and mix of peoples. In many homes, for example, the seafood barbecue has long ago replaced the roast turkey as the traditional Christmas feast. And out in our gardens several plants which bloom in the traditional colours of red and green, or at least at this time of year, have earned the name "Christmas Bush". We have two of them here at our place.

Pam bought a bunch of New South Wales Christmas bush today and popped it into a vase in the corner of our kitchen, as she likes to do every year. This is a native Australian plant with the name of Ceratopetalum gummiferum, but everyone just calls it Christmas bush. Though the vivid red highlights look like flowers, they're actually coloured bracts. Over the last month or two I've taken some shots of how they form.

Here's our Christmas bush in early October, flowering fairly heavily with its real, small white flowers. Though pleasant enough, they don't put on much of a show, nor do they smell especially nice. Our plant is in a pot and is kept small, but out in the bush these can form small trees 5-9 metres tall.

Here's how things progress by late October. The red bracts are starting to form in good numbers now, but it's not a rapid transformation.

By early November this year the bracts were showing their strongest colour. And that meant this year the timing was all-wrong! Way too early. They should be doing this now, not in early November, but that's Christmas bush for you, especially potted specimens, such as ours. And so that's why Pam bought a big bunch from the florist today. It's plentiful at this time of year, and florists stock a cultivar called 'Albery's Red' which has the strongest, most reliable red colouring.

Elsewhere on our property a New Zealand Christmas bush has joined the NSW Christmas bush in flowering too early, and so only the last stragglers are still in bloom now in mid December. This plant's botanical name is Metrosideros, and this is one of Pam's photos of it when it was in bloom several weeks ago. The Maori name for it is pohutakawa.

Here's another of Pam's photos of the NZ Christmas bush. Their flowers are spectacular starbursts of red needles topped with tiny glowing yellow tips, and the unopened buds are fuzzy frosted grey packets of pent-up energy.

There are lots of different sizes and shapes of Metrosideros around the Pacific. Some can become huge trees, others are shrubs, and most of them cope well with a position by the seaside (which is not where we are, by the way). Many different cultivars come from various Pacific Islands, to which it is also native. In New Zealand, it flowers around Christmas quite reliably, I hear. Here in Australia its ignominious job is to provide a green, flowering screen for our set of wheelie garbage and recycling bins when people look down our side passage from the street. A prisoner in a fairly big pot, it's about 1.5m high now, and at this size it does its screening job magnificently. I completely underestimated what a handsome thing it would become when I bought it.

Elsewhere in Australia, Western Australia has its own Christmas bush, a stunning golden-yellow-flowered tree, Nuytsia floribunda. And Victoria has the Victorian Christmas bush, Prostanthera lasianthos, usually with lots of pink flowers (although other colours exist, such as mauve, white or lilac), and always with highly fragrant foliage, as it belongs to the mint bush family. There are quite a few other plants with "Christmas" in their names in addition to these, but it's nice to have the NSW Christmas bush and its Kiwi mate here adding their own layers of red and green to the build-up to Christmas.

Our best wishes to you all, from Pam and Jamie.