2015 - The Gardening Year in Review

As far as years go, I'd be the first to admit that 2015 has not been a "biggie" in the scheme of things. We didn't set any growth records, we didn't redesign the garden, storms didn't destroy it, bumper crops were not harvested ... in fact it proved to be a perfectly normal year all round. Phew!

Yes, there were successes and failures, lots of fun with plants and plenty of fascination with nature, plus a little sadness, and so there remains but one more thing to do before we pop the champagne and declare "Happy New Year" to friends and neighbours: and that's to hand out some awards to the deserving. Now, if Pammy could hand me the envelopes, let's begin the 2015 Garden Amateur Awards!

Plant of the Year/Blog of the Year

And the winner is a happily resettled refugee! Pam's former potted office plant, this delightfully spotty Begonia maculata, was forced to move from its original home simply because it had outgrown the space. It has now settled in superbly into its new outdoor home under the murraya bush (still within view of Pam's office), where it shares the moist shade with other former residents of Pammy's verdant office, some maidenhair ferns. The big suspense surrounded the begonia's chances of surviving its first winter outdoors ... and it not only romped it in — it kept on growing. 

Now, this begonia is a bit like those Hollywood blockbusters that take out all the prizes on Oscars night, because as well as winning POTY (Plant of the Year) it also took out the prestigious BOTY (Blog of the Year) award for the most-read blog posting here at Garden Amateur. It seems lots of people wanted to know about what does well in a shady spot.  

Wildlife of the Year

The winner of WOTY (Wildlife of the Year) is Mr and Mrs Native Paper Wasp, pictured here building their new creche just outside our kitchen window. Much maligned by the ill-informed anti-insect crowd (the Taliban of nature lovers), paper wasps are beneficial insects which are nowhere near as cranky as the Taliban says they are. 

Idea of the Year

Turning little punnets of supermarket sprouts into crops has proved to be a runaway success, and deserving winner of the IOTY (Idea of the Year) award. Pictured here is the chervil sprouts loving life as thriving crops, and elsewhere in the garden the same idea has produced great crops of both flat-leaf parsley and coriander. 

Crop of the Year 

Though they are small in size, the little Lebanese zucchini takes out the 2015 Crop of the Year (COTY) award through its production of healthy flavour in good, steady numbers. These tasty little fruits just keep on coming, despite the fact that their foliage growing overhead looks like a hospital ward of powdery mildew disasters. Doesn't bother the little workers down at ground level, they just keep on producing.

Surprise of the Year 

After more than 20 years of being quietly green and very fragrantly leafy, our false cardamom plant decided it was time to be flowery, which makes it the standout choice for SOTY (Surprise of the Year). However, big questions remain to be answered in 2016 (which might put it in line for Suspense of the Year): Will it flower just once every 20 years? Will it flower every year from now on? What in the hell prompted it to start flowering? Does it know something about climate change that we don't know? Stay tuned...

Fish of the Year 

This special one-off award has been inaugurated purely to honour the passing of our little goldfishy mate, Paul, who passed away late this year, just a few days short of his sixth birthday. Most little goldfish never achieve much in the way of internet fame, but at least Paul has been read about by hundreds of readers of this blog, and he also has been immortalised artistically in this lovely painting by his honorary mum, my slightly biased pick for Artist of the Year (AOTY), Pamela Horsnell. RIP Paul, you did great.



And so that's it for our 2015 Awards Show here at Garden Amateur. Pammy and I and all the regulars here at the Garden Amateur blog would like to say a big "thanks" to everyone who has visited our blog, left a comment or just accidentally found us while looking for something else. We'll be back in 2016 but in the meantime, have a happy and safe New Year and we look forward to continuing to share our love of gardening, nature and anything else that we fancy all through the coming year.

The lost spring

"We're going to miss out on spring this year," Pam said this morning, and she's mostly right, as we'll be travelling while many things will be bursting into leaf and bloom, and we won't be back until after they have finished. And so this afternoon I did a quick lap of our small garden to look for signs of spring, and I found plenty. On with the show.

Only one-third of the way to full bloom, and already the Scadoxus are stealing the show again. The wonderful thing about this year's blooming is that it's earlier than in the two previous years. I was sure we were going to miss out on seeing anything from them, and what do you know! They must be mind-readers and took pity on us.

This is the first time all three bulbs have bloomed, and the good news is that the oldest bulb is sending out a little 'pup' of a new bulb forming at its feet. Who knows, in 10 years we'll have a clump!

Very pleasing to see the first leaf burst out from the Turkish Brown fig which we planted in late autumn, when it was just a bare stick.

I've seen our pinky-white orchids bloom in late September every year for the last 20 years here, and so I can imagine how lovely they will be very easily.

Our rosemary bush is just starting to flower now, and it was a beautifully fragrant place to be when I brushed against its leaves to take this snap.

These buds belong to our NSW Christmas Bush, and it will be touch and go whether it will still be in flower when we return in early November.

The angel wing begonias always get a bit sad and tatty looking over winter, but they've turned the corner of the season now. I fed them a week or two ago and every pair of leafy 'angel wings' is opening to to make space for a rose-pink tipped baby new leaf to emerge.

Every year the flowering weeds like this heartsease (viola) reappear without any encouragement from me.

Another flowering weed, the primulas have been in this garden ever since we moved here two decades ago. In our first year we foolishly asked the garden centre for something that flowered in shade, and so we brought home primulas and impatiens. I have eradicated the impatiens, but the primulas always come back.

At least these darker coloured primulas offer a bit of a variation on that pastel pink.

I shouldn't complain about the primulas, it's not as if they're giving the parsnips a hard time. By the time we get back the parsnips should be OK to harvest.

And speaking of harvesting, I really should harvest all the cumquats and turn them into marmalade, but I have so many other things to do right now before we leave, and marmalade-making doesn't make it into the top 100!

Accidental side passage success

One of the harder places to find a plant for is the side passageway between a house and a fence. By pure luck, about two years ago, I came across an ideal choice for my temperate climate zone: the angel wing begonia, also called a cane begonia.

It has always been grown in a pot, but for the first few years I had it in too much sun, without realising it. The plant didn't grow or flower a lot, but it never looked particularly sick, either. It was just hanging in there.

I was on the point of getting rid of it, when, purely to make room for a potted frangipani that needed lots of sunshine, I moved the begonia out of the sun and down to the side passage along my eastern boundary.

It immediately thrived there, growing and flowering profusely over the next couple of months. It flowers mostly in spring and summer, but it usually has one or two blooms even in winter.

It was growing so well that I decided to re-pot it last spring, to keep it going happily. I accidentally broke off a few canes (they are a bit brittle to handle repotting) in the process. Instead of tossing away the broken canes, I just stuck them into a spare pot, put them beside the parent plant in the same side passage, and they took no time at all to sprout new leaves. This second begonia is now well over 50cm tall after just nine months' growth.

I mostly feed the plants with a slow-release fertiliser, which seem to be ideally suited to potted plants' need of a steady trickle of nutrients. They get regular water, but never seem to wilt if they're neglected for a few days. They're just tough plants.