Popping up all by themselves

If you want to bring out the inner child in a gardener, let them discover a pretty flower in their garden which they know they haven't planted themselves. 

They'll never see it and think "weed" ... they'll always think "I'm blessed, a pretty flower has chosen my garden to grow in". 

For a while they might entertain fantasies that it's a rarity, that they'll be visited by botanists wanting to see it ... but they keep these daydreams to themselves mostly.

Later on they'll ask a spoilsport of a gardening friend what their beautiful visitor is, and it's then they'll discover that their magical find is, in fact, a notorious spreading weed which needs to be eradicated ASAP.

I am such a spoilsport, so be prepared for some disappointing news if you ask me about that delightful new mystery visitor to your little slice of heaven.

It's happened this week, it being spring and all, so here's just one example. 

I can't be 100 percent certain, but I reckon this pinky person poking through this Sydney lawn is called a cape tulip, Moraea miniata. Or at least that's what the government's weed identification website told me. It's the first place I visit when trying to identify a plant a friend sends to me. Nice flower, but it's a weed.

On the other hand, when I am completely out of guesses about identifying a mystery plant, I contact one of my old horticulturist workmates from gardening magazine days. See the next photo below. It had me stumped, because I couldn't find it on any weed listing ... and that's because it wasn't a weed.

Sarah, a friend (and former workmate) who's now living in the Central West region of NSW, sent me a photo of this shrub with the unusual orangey-brown flowers. I didn't have a clue, and so I sent it on to Elizabeth, an expert horticulturist. She got back to me via email, writing: "Now to that brown flowering plant. I first encountered this back in 2013 in a “dry garden” in Wellington NSW. It is Salvia africana-lutea; it’s really interesting, unusual and very very tough!"

So, not all mystery plants are weeds, but I'd still bet that the one you have discovered popping up all by itself in your backyard garden this spring is, in fact, I regret to inform you, bad luck old friend ... a weed.

However, I'd hate to conclude my blog posting on such a negative note, and so I hereby confess to having introduced a wide array of very persistent flowering weeds into my own garden, which may well have wandered into neighbouring gardens somehow and made my neighbours wonder where their pretty visitor came from.  

All that aside, it's a pleasure to see my weedy beauties popping up here every year, all by themselves, from seed dropped by last year's flowers. Here's some favourites:

I hereby declare Love-in-a-Mist my favourite weed.

Johnny jump ups (Heartsease) have been here since we planted them 28 years ago.

Same with the primulas, they always pop up here every year.

Then again, some weeds in our garden look like weeds, behave like weeds, choke other plants like the worst weeds do, they cannot be eradicated no matter what I try ... and I detest them ... and then they pop up with a pretty flower that I can't resist admiring, such as this vivid blue tradescantia bloom. Doesn't make me like tradescantia the garden thug one bit ... I just think of it now as a bully with piercing blue eyes.

A bouquet of flowers

Some collective nouns do their job quite well, such as a gaggle of geese, but the idea of a 'bunch' of flowers has never sounded right to me. Far too plain a word for such a lovely thing. However, a 'bouquet' of flowers is a lovely word, and so here's a little photographic bouquet of flowers in bloom this afternoon in our early-spring garden here in Sydney.

Geranium 'Philippe Vapelle', the only survivor from a group of six or so geraniums I bought at a flower show five years ago. I was told they like a colder climate than Sydney's and whoever told me so was right, but at least Monsieur Vapelle is flying the flag for true Geraniums here in Sin City.

Good old alyssum, just scatter a packet of seeds in a long, low planter and it looks after itself. Of course you have to put up with it self-seeding into cracks in the paving and all sorts of other spots, but I don't mind. And it does smell nice when you're weeding in its vicinity.

The calendulas are doing a lovely job making the spinach patch brighter, and as I've grown these from seed I'm just that little bit more pleased about them.

One of the bonuses you get with seed-grown plants is that they occasionally toss up weirdos, such as the very pale lemon double calendula. Yes, it's a confused mess of a thing but it's my seed-grown confused mess, and it's welcome here next to the spinach patch.

This is another of that category of plants which I frequently refer to in this blog as 'Pam's plants'. It's a dark-leafed pelargonium which sends up almost pink flowers which in certain lights look almost salmon-pink. However, Pam likes it for its dark leaves, and I'm growing it in one corner of 'Succulent City' where it adds some welcome contrast and colour in amongst the succulents.

Also in amongst the succulents, and completely uninvited, are the primulas, which I foolishly bought many years ago, and which self-seed prolifically and come up everywhere each spring. A pretty weed at best which I try to keep down to a few splotches of pink here and there.

And finally, my sage bush is in bloom. Though this is my culinary herb bush, not a flowering type, someone forgot to tell my sage that it doesn't have to flower prolifically, because it's a herb, and yet it does. (Probably thinks "Everything else is flowering, well so will I.") As soon as it finishes flowering, which will be in a few weeks' time, I'll get out the secateurs and cut the whole thing back by about one-third. This brings on lots of new leafy growth and it always looks just yummy by late summer and autumn.

Up close, each little blue sage flower is reminiscent of an orchid bloom, with its spotty tongue leading down to a cavernous throat, with wings on each side looking as if they are ready to paddle foolish insects inside.

Viewed side-on the sage bloom is not quite so pretty but is beautifully complex nevertheless. (Reminds me of that Rolling Stones tongue logo). At the end of flowering all that's left are the muddy-red cups which held the blooms, and at this stage the plant truly looks exhausted, clapped-out and half-way to carking it. That's when the magic of the secateurs is needed. This renews its mission to be a fragrant, beautiful and useful member of the garden, which it is. Even though it's a humble herb, it's actually one of the stars here in Amateur Land.

Finally, if any readers of this blog are in the Sydney, Central Coast or Hunter regions, the annual Florafest flower and garden show is on again at Kariong near Gosford, and I'll be manning the Burke's Backyard stand next Saturday, so drop by and say hello if you are planning on checking out the show. Every time I go to Florafest I tell myself that "this year I'm definitely not buying anything because there's no room to put it". Last year I only bought three clivias and three ornamental gingers, so that was fairly restrained. Who knows what I'll bring home this time (or, for that matter, what Pam will bring home, too!)

Purplish patches

We're not exactly swamped with flowers at the moment, but that relative scarcity of blooms allows the few performers to have the stage all to themselves. And right now there's a pretty little bluey-purple show going on.

All Sydney readers will know this photo wasn't taken today, as it's pouring with rain at the moment, and all of us Sydney gardeners are going 'Yippee, rain at last!'. No, this is a sunny Sunday morning shot, with the early morning sun lighting up my little village of succulents (on the right) and its protective pathside forest of purple-flowered alyssum. The alyssum in the pot comes from seed I sowed there a bit over two months ago. The alyssum outside the pot is self-sown – such a pretty little paving weed, isn't it?

Not far from the alyssum the newly planted Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' is having a wonderful time settling into its new home, even sending out an outrageous bloom every now and then. If it could talk I'm sure it'd just giggle.

New growth everywhere, flowers, flower buds and hopefully more flowers, so far so good.

Such a powerful colour, purple. To my mind, when at it's best, it evokes a sense of celebration, maybe even extravagance. But at it's worst, it can be trashy and gaudy. I guess it's just how you use it in the end that matters. Just a couple of little purple patches now, when nothing much else is in bloom, seems about right. They have the whole garden to themselves and they certainly are lighting up the joint right now.

Spring's prettiest weeds

I have no-one to blame but myself for some of the weed problems here in my garden. At least this is a pretty problem and also not an especially bad one. Whether I like it or not, spring is a time when a variety of flowers pop up uninvited. And every one of these 'pretty weeds of spring' were originally brought home by me from a garden centre.

First, some introductions. This is Ingrid, our quiche, pie and flan gnome. Her little flower companions go by a couple of names – heartsease and Johnny Jump-Up – but essentially they're a form of viola. They come up all around the garden – more often in shady or semi-shady spots.

While the darker coloured heartsease surrounding Ingrid are the most common, other colours occasionally come up from seed, and they're very pretty.

Primulas compete with the Johnny Jump-ups for weed rights in the semi-shade. While the original ones planted were white, all the weedy ones which self-seed every year are these pinky colours.

Here, the primulas seem to be competing with the Johnny Jump-ups for the same square inch of soil. I leave them to it if they aren't bothering anything else. The primulas, being bigger at the base, usually win.

Alyssum is a sun-lover that I plant in pots to decorate my succulent patch, but it's so hardy and self-seedy that it comes up in cracks in the paving. Last autumn I grew a purple coloured alyssum for a change, and I've noticed little patches of purple self-sown alyssum coming up here and there along the pavers, as well as the much more common white form.

It's with some trepidation that I have decided to re-introduce impatiens into the garden. It took me years of very persistent weeding to get rid of the first infestation. I've only ever liked the white form, but the weedy form comes up pink or red, not my favourite flower colours. This plant is in a planter mounted on the back wall of the house, at least three metres from the nearest patch of soil, and while it has dressed up the wall nicely, I'm keeping a close eye on any suspiciously impatiens-like seedlings coming up anywhere else.

The same thing is happening in my poppy patch this year as happened last year. Though I try to be a good boy about deadheading spent flowers, I always miss a few, and that's enough to send up these wonderful looking wild poppies amid all the other poppies. These flowers don't last as long as the cultivated Iceland poppies, but they're always a welcome sight.

If I've included a photo of Ingrid, our flan and quiche gnome, I might as well include one of her love interest, Mitchell, our Librarian gnome. Mitchell is surrounded by a sea of native violets, and these are weeds of a creeping, relentless, invasive sort.

The best I can hope for with native violets is to limit their spread. As these tenacious little groundcover plants like semi shade and well-moistened soil, they occupy the fairly well-watered ground beneath my espaliered lime tree.

It's ironic that 'self-seeding' seems at first to be such a low-maintenance benefit in a plant. "What, you don't even have to plant it, and it just comes up by itself each year? Wonderful."

Unfortunately, the reality is that self-seeding plants also come up here, there and everywhere each year: in pots, in the middle of the vegie patch, in garden beds where you're trying to coax something far more tender and delicate into life (like my poor little easily-bullied cyclamen). You don't just get a couple of self seeding flowers. You get hundreds of them. They can be a pest, just like any other weed.

And so the self-seeders have become just another part of my weeding workload. I pull most of them out when I see the seedlings forming, yet I always also allow the odd one to grow on where they will prove both pretty and harmless. And of course quite a few manage to spring up and flower where I don't want them to, despite my best efforts. I don't really mind. They're as much a part of this garden as I am, in the end. And they're prettier than me.

Midwinter blooms

It's the middle of July here on my side of the world – midwinter – and at first glance you can sometimes deceive yourself into thinking that there's not a lot happening in the garden, especially when it comes to flowers. But that's not really true. As it was a gorgeous winter morning that was headed for an almost perfect day of clear blue skies and a max around 22°C (72°F), I headed out into the garden for half an hour to discover the coolest midwinter flowers I could find here on this lovely warm day in Amateur Land.

First stop the poppies, of course. Open our back door in the morning and the first thing you see are the poppies. And until you wander outside you might be mistaken in thinking that there are just poppies and nothing else. This pretty person is a double. I'm getting all sorts of colours and forms from the same set of poppy seedlings, so poppies just keep on providing a delightful bunch of surprises as the weeks roll by.

Pam's in charge of poppy-picking for vases, and this is this morning's harvest, next to the phone in the hallway (in the low morning light).

Helleborus are called Winter Roses by some folk here, and while they're only vaguely rose-like they certainly do bloom in winter. To enjoy a hellebore in bloom you usually need to get your knees dirty. The flowers hang down, quite close to the ground. They are at their best in a garden if you can find a lofty spot for them (say, atop a ridge on some sloping ground), so you can enjoy them by looking up while standing on the lower level. Fortunately I had an entirely expendable pair of jeans on, and so these blooms are well worth the brown knees.

I made the silly mistake of planting my peas in more shade than I thought they'd get. I guessed incorrectly they'd receive about four hours a day when coming up in June, then the sunshine would increase around now as they got into serious growth. Wrong! They never got four hours back then, and they're barely getting four hours now, so I don't think I'll get much of a crop. Live and learn! At least there's a few pea flowers, and I'll hopefully get a little crop, but I'll probably end up garnishing everyone's mashed potato with a single home-grown pea!

Across the path from the sun-starved peas, the alyssum is enjoying a good deal more sunshine and is as happy as can be.

In the ultra-shade not far from the peas, the tiny white cyclamen are in bloom. These midgets survive from year to year, and always put on an ever so slightly unusual show, courtesy of their odd shapes. Cyclamen are easily bullied by weeds and bigger neighbouring plants, so I don't feel quite so much their grower as I do their protector.

This one needs no protection whatsoever – in fact with grevilleas such as this 'Peaches and Cream', regular pruning does the trick. I have another grevillea nearby, a red-flowered one called 'Superb' which blooms virtually year-round, as this one does. While this grevillea is included here as a 'winter flower' it and its mate could easily get a guernsey in the spring flower, summer flower and autumn flower blogs, as well. And they're much visited by all sorts of nectar-eating native birds, too.

These little yellow puff-balls of wattle bloom are the very first flowers to appear on the groundcovering Acacia baileyana that makes a spectacle of itself in my front garden. It should be in full bloom by the weekend, I hope, but the show is usually over in a few weeks (depends on the weather how long it lasts).

I might as well include this photo of the next spray of orchids well on the way, as the early-flowering orchids are just finishing now, and looking a bit tatty, while these late flowerers should nevertheless still make it onto the 'winter flowering' list.

For the record, these are the early guys, which are a maroony-brown colour. They're at their best in June, and almost all of them end up in vases inside, where they last for weeks.

And also for the record, this photo of the later-flowering pinky-white ones is of course from last year, but I thought I'd toss it in just to show the two types of orchids which bloom here at either end of winter.

Finally, I'd like to finish off with the winter 'flower' I most regret not growing this year, and which I definitely plan to grow next year. Pretty broad beans, from last year's crop. Superb flowers, wonderful vegetables too. Why I didn't grow them this year is all about having not enough space for everything I'd like to grow, and that's something most keen gardeners know all about.

While only a few of our winter's days are as lovely as today's has been, when Sydney decides to put on a pearler of a sunny midwinter's day it somehow feels more special, maybe because the sun-warmed days are still bookended by crispy cold nights. A perfect day for getting outside and enjoying everything the garden has to offer.

Backyard babies

It's a lazy gardener's dream come true when you hear the rain on the roof in the morning. "Oh, good, I don't have to worry about watering the babies – thank you rain god." And so it was this morning. Nothing to set the weather bureau humming with excitement, but a couple of mills of rain nevertheless. And the cloudy weather makes everything look and smell so nice.

Even in their adult glory tiny alyssum flowers look like a cluster of so many babies, so I thought I'd start with them.

Sown as seed a few weeks back, this pot of chervil is enjoying its semi-shaded new home. I tried to grow it last year, presuming it was a typical sun-loving herb, and it didn't thrive. And then I discovered that it's a shy thing that likes its semi shade. Looks a lot like parsley (see the next pic) and it's said to be lovely with eggs. Will report back on this one later on. So far, so good.

And speaking of parsley, here's this year's seed-sown parsley border powering along. Parsley takes about three weeks just to sprout from seed, then another couple of weeks to get

serious about growing. But about 10 days ago it announced its adolescence and it's belting along. Four weeks from now it will probably want to leave home.

A free packet of tomato seeds with the latest gardening magazine: Grosse Lisse tomatoes. There are also Tiny Tim cherry tomatoes coming up well from seed, plus Roma egg tomatoes from seed, all side by side in the same little suburb of punnets.

An encouraging sight – new growth on the bay tree. At the very bottom left of this pic you can see a typically winter-blighted bay tree leaf with scale damage. I truly tried to be a diligent gardener and sprayed the thing with PestOil this winter, and still the relentless scale set up colonies. At least this new growth compensates for the lack of success with the pest prevention.

Roast chicken here I come! Oops, forgive me, I haven't made introductions. This is the 2008 spring crop of French tarragon, springing up and rapidly making headway. This herb dies back in winter and then bounces back in spring from the runners it sends out. It has a mildly aniseedy flavour that is just made for chicken (and French mustard, and garlic, but that's another posting). One of these days I'll get really adventurous and try it with something else...

I guess I'm stretching the concept of babies with these little winter-sown cherry tomatoes, but they changed colour from green to red the other day, and it at least they get a 'coming of age' award for doing that.

Raised from seed, this Zucchini 'Black Beauty' baby will soon become a tearaway teenager and then a hardworking, productive adult a few weeks after that. Hopefully there will be a full zucchini blog with recipes a few months from now. So far, the kid is doing fine!

And this large person is a baby, a newly planted big baby. My Pammy has always wanted a frangipani tree, and I love them, too (the classic one with white flowers with a yellow centre and a tropically sweet fragrance). A few years back one of my workmates, Krissy, decided to renovate her house, and the hardest thing for her was getting rid of her big, old frangipani tree to make way for the snazzy new building. So, all sorts of family and friends received cuttings from her tree, and they're growing well in several new homes, including ours. Last Sunday we decided the time was right for 'baby' to go into its new home in the garden, having spent two summers growing and developing nicely in a pot. One funny little thing is this: 'baby frangipani' looked like a whopper in the pot, but it looks just like a small but perfectly formed tree in the ground.

Babies might come in all shapes and sizes, but the nurturing instinct is blind to size.