Nanna's garden

Last Sunday I went over to pick up my wife Pam's mum, Val, to take her to a birthday celebration for one of her grandchildren on the other side of town. Though it was a grey and overcast afternoon, there was just enough light to take a few snaps, and so I thought for a change of pace, instead of blogging about my little patch, I'd celebrate Nanna's garden, and a very good garden it is, too. It's mostly a front garden, one which all the passers-by in her area enjoy every day.

Val loves to bring garden blooms indoors to pop into vases. This is a doddle to do in the warmer months, as her garden flowers prolifically, but in winter it's not so easy. So here's three cheers for camellias – the mainstays of so many winter gardens here in Sydney and elsewhere.

Val's garden provides a lot of pleasure to passers-by, as the street where she lives always seems to have someone walking past – commuters heading for the bus stop, elderly Chinese couples from the nearby new townhouse development getting some exercise, plus mums and dads walking the dog. There are lots of friendly calls of 'hello', 'hi' and 'how are you doing' exchanged around here.

Around the western side of the house, in a spot which gets full sun, this bed has been self-seeding itself for many years. In summer it's filled with colourful daisies of various sorts, plus succulents, pelargoniums, gazanias, chrysanthemums and a few other interlopers who've made a home for themselves there.

I think these dramatic, spiky plants are yuccas, and they say a lot about Val's willingness to try new things and see how they go. They're going OK, too!

At the back of Val's house the zygocactus are in bloom. These hardy plants, which are almost invariably grown in hanging baskets, flower here in May and June, and their colours are almost fluoro in their intensity. Val's favourite colour is a slightly more subdued salmon, but alas my photo of that one is a blurry travesty taken in too-low light, and so the best I can manage is this dazzling pink person.

There isn't just one basket of zygos at Val's. There are several, and in combination the effect is tropical in its intensity, a welcome burst of warmth in late autumn and early winter.

Out near the letterbox the last of the autumn daisies are still catching the sun. With a light clipping back they'll return next season.

Many of the beds at Val's are very easy-care, as they are based on succulents, whose foliage colour provides a year-round blend of fresh green, earthy red and bluish-grey.

The elderly Chinese couples passing by approve greatly of Val's long line of 'money trees' (Crassulas) as they are said to bring prosperity to the house and its occupants.

Foliage plays an especially important role in winter, when the flowers are not so plentiful. This sight out near the letterbox greets the postman every day.

And of course there are gnomes in Nanna's garden!

The reason I took my camera to Val's was a request from Pam to take some photos of the Japonica (the flowering quince) in bloom. Unfortunately I was too early and this was the sole flower I could find. These plants flower on bare stems in winter and look quite impressive for several weeks. They're an old-fashioned plant found in many Nannas' gardens, and Pam wants one. I don't have space for this size of shrub in my own garden and wondered how I could fit one in. Then I read that japonicas can make an excellent bonsai specimen, so that is a little assignment for me to add to my list.

And so that's a quick lap of Nanna's garden. There are all sorts of tired old jokes about mothers-in-law, but the fact is that Val and I are very good mates. We share a love of gardening – a love of Pam! – and a love of food, wine, movies, politics and art – but, alas, not the same music! She's a jazz fan from way back, yet she doesn't just listen to the old stuff. Her CD collection is full of young jazz musicians' work, and she's always keen on seeing live music when the chance arises.

She's an amazing person who does a huge amount of community work, and she's a living legend in her local arts scene. She knows more mayors, MPs and politicians than any other little old white-haired Nanna I've ever met, that's for sure. She's always complaining about how terrible it is to be the mother of children aged in their mid 50s, but the best thing about Val is her amazing zest for living. It's there in her personality, and it's there for all the world to see in her garden, too.

The two of us

With a max of around 29°C and the humidity meter set to 'muggy', only a foolish boy with a whole weekend ahead of him would get out the ladder and clippers today, to tame the espaliered lime, some wayward hedges and an olive tree with pretensions to grandeur. These jobs can wait till tomorrow, and in the meantime I can contemplate why some pairs of plants can be so different, and others so beautifully synchronised, and why I find all this so handy as a gardener.

This is just another excuse to play with Photoshop, a panorama of Amateur Land taken about half an hour ago. At the far right and far left of the panorama are my first "two of us" subjects, my cumquats. In between is a garden that right now needs little work.

My friend Michelle's cumquat on the left, mine is on the right. I'm baby-sitting Michelle's plant while she explores the Australian Outback for a year or so, from her base in Birdsville (her blog is in my blog links section). Her cumquat is a perfectly healthy little thing with vivid, dark green leaves. It flowers earlier than my plant, sets fruit earlier and is doing well, covered in baby fruits. But it hasn't grown all that much as a tree. My tree, by comparison, is growing like mad, and is also flowering well and covered in fruits now, and it's the younger of the two plants by about 12 months.

Can't be sure but I think these are fruits on Michelle's plant. Her plant has been in my care for about 12 months now and has received identical food, water, fertiliser as the other one. The only possible differences to explain the lack of growth are:

1. Michelle's plant was traumatised big-time by a 41°C summer scorcher on New Year's Day in 2007. My plant didn't exist at that time, I bought and planted mine later that year.

2. Michelle's plant is in a plastic pot, and mine is in a glazed ceramic pot.

And that's about it. Maybe the potting mixes are different, but they both drain well and I don't think they're a factor, as potting mixes lose fertility fairly fast, so they're both dependent entirely on the food I give them (which comes in a steady flow of light feeds every six weeks).

My guess is that the stout, healthy little plant is a tough little trauma victim which is soldiering on wonderfully, but maybe its root system is still regrowing and things are still are not all that good below-ground. There's a product sold here called Seasol, which is an organic, seaweed-based liquid that is marketed as a "root growth promoter" and "soil conditioner", rather than a fertiliser, so I've resolved to give the trauma victim a few fortnightly doses of magic elixir and see how it shapes up over the next few months. If that doesn't work, I'll repot it in late winter and see if fresh potting mix helps. That's all I can think of.

"Two of us" case number 2, the sedums. (Maybe I should give this one a Robert Ludlum style title such as "The Sedum Conundrum" – maybe not...) Two cuttings brought home from a visit to a gardener-pal in southern Australia. Both are sedums, both thriving in my friend Amanda's garden down south. On the left is Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and on the right, the plant I now call Sedumn 'No Joy'. Identical spots, identical potting mix, identical care. The one on the right is in a permanent sulk, its cousin on the left, delirious with joy.

These flower buds of 'Autumn Joy' start out light pink then darken as they open, the combination of blooms and foliage as fresh as happy teenagers having fun at the beach.

This one is doing the equivalent of sitting locked in its room listening to loud heavy metal music. Not happy. With all potted plants, my motto is "if not performing, repot!" And so that's all I can think of at this stage.

I have a soundtrack in mind for my final little "two of us" pairing – Bryan Ferry and "Let's Stick Together", although the lyric would have to alter to "let's bloom together, come on come on, let's bloom together". In one part of the garden, a potted crassula (which my Googling thinks is called "Baby's necklace", but which I like to think of as "Pagoda") has decided to flower. These are the buds, and the blooms themselves will be small, with reddish centres, I expect. (The green leaves? The oregano which never knows when it's not welcome).

Brought home from a local nursery only a couple of months ago, this had the very unhelpful label of "succulent" on it (as so many succulents do, unfortunately), but I am sure it's a crassula, too. To confirm my suspicions, the moment Crassula 'Pagoda' burst into bloom, so did this little fellow. There must be a crassula checklist buried in their DNA: temperatures down? Check. Daylight length shortening? Check. Bit of rain lately? Check. OK, Crassulas, let's do it!

I guess all I'm trying to say that it's always handy to have more than one of any plant in your garden, just so you have some reference point for its health, its progress and overall happiness. Once the crassulas finish flowering I'm thinking of potting them up into larger pots and putting them together, for company. I'll repot the 'No Joy' sedum and see what happens, and I'll give Michelle's cumquat a bit more specialised care before repotting. Without the comparison plants, I might have done nothing much more with any of them.