Pam's plants

For those of you new to this blog, a little bit of recent history to start with. Late last year I stupidly broke my foot and in the process damaged a bunch of tendons and ligaments in my ankle, and so I was sidelined from gardening for months.

With my leg in a cast and reduced to camping out on our living room sofa for weeks on end, my intrepid wife Pammy took over garden maintenance duties with a dedication and competence that, quite frankly, surprised and delighted me at the same time. She's a real gardener, and a good one!

Pam has always been deeply involved in our garden, but for the first 30 years here it was largely a "hands off" role. I was the one covered in dirt, pulling the weeds and spreading the fertiliser. She was the one who spotted pests and other problems, suggested new plantings, came up with the idea for the complete re-design of the garden about 15 years ago, and turned so many details of our garden into beautiful paintings.

Until Covid struck, our garden had been the venue for many of Pam's art classes, and even after covid limited the numbers of students who could attend, the garden still provided a really lovely venue for small watercolour art classes.

So, that's the background to who this "Pam" of today's topic, "Pam's plants", is. Ever since we moved here Pam has taken a special interest in certain plants. Sometimes she has straight-out suggested we buy something. Other times she just comes home with a plant in a pot and says "I have an idea where this might go". 

And even if I bought a certain plant, planted it and cared for it, at some time in its life it became one of Pam's plants. 

So, on with some examples of all these stories of "Pam's plants".

Thank goodness this person started flowering just this morning, right on time for this blog posting. This is Convolvulus cneorum, and around the middle of last year, Pam came to me with a newspaper advertisement from Flower Power nursery, with the photo of Convolvulus cneorum circled, and asked "can we buy this?". 

Given it was in the middle of a not very strict set of covid restrictions on shopping etc, I knew this wasn't an ordinary request. Bought it home, planted it in a sunny spot, and it then proceeded to flower its head off with these charmingly simple white disc flowers with a yellow splash in the centre. 

Then it did the unexpected and faded, wilted, looked a bit sick, sickened a bit more, wilted a touch more ... and the conversation had to be had. Do you think it will survive? Let's give it another week or two. It was never going to be my decision to give up on it. It was one of Pam's plants ...

Thank goodness we gave it a reprieve, as it bounced back in autumn, kept on growing a bit in winter in a weird, leggy kind of way, and now in early spring it's flowering. Yay! 

Pam recently brought this dazzler home from a local florist's shop, saying that our main frangipani tree, bare of foliage and flowers in mid-winter, was a good spot for a hanging basket of flowering Kalanchoe. It's the first thing you see when you enter the garden.

Pam has always loved nasturtiums and I've largely resisted growing them, because they spread and, well ... basically they are pleasant looking weeds. But as her reward for being such a great gardener during my long convalescence, I bought her a packet of nasturtium seeds, and said "you can plant these and let's see what happens". Well, nasturtiums happened, that's what! They do look nice with raindrops on them in the morning.

And the flowers produced by our little seed packets come in quite a variety, and they are a favourite subject for Pam's watercolour art students too. They love wandering out into the garden, picking a flower, then doing a painting of it. Good for the soul, painting.

Ever since Pam and I visited the United States in 2011, she has been in love with Spanish moss. All through the Deep South you'd see masses of this ghostly grey "air plant" draped over the branches of giant live oak trees. The streets of Savannah, Georgia, are one of the most unforgettable things I have ever seen on my travels. We came home in love with a plant, and it's been in our garden ever since.

The flowers of Spanish moss are so tiny, about a quarter of an inch across (that's about 5mm) and so Pam's gorgeously detailed painting of a Spanish moss bloom celebrates our garden's tiniest flower by allowing you a glimpse into its small but perfectly formed beauty. Time for a shameless plug, but if you want to see more of Pam's work, pop over to Instagram where she is at @pamelahorsnellartist

Bending the rules slightly here, as our main frangipani tree has no leaves, no flowers and is still asleep. But it's the biggest of Pam's plants in our garden. She loves this frangipani ...

... and she also adores this colourful frangi (also bare in winter) that she brought home from the nearby art studio, called the Bakehouse Studio, where she teaches painting. The parent of this tree is in the backyard at the Bakehouse Studio, so when they trimmed it back one year they turned them into lovely big cuttings which they sold to raise funds for a local school. Pam had always had her eye on this frangipani tree, so she brought it home. 

Like the frangipani trees, our New South Wales Christmas bush is not in flower, but it is definitely one of Pam's plants. This poor thing has been having a great time in its pot for the last few years, but it took ages to find a spot where it was truly happy, and every time it was unhappy, where pests attacked it, or the tree itself just looked sick, Pam was onto me. "It's not happy, what's wrong? Let's move it somewhere else? Is that pot big enough? She's taken a special interest in its welfare, and it's rewarding her with better and better colour shows each year.

Finally, one of the most recent additions to the roster of Pam's plants is this gorgeous, fragrant jungle of lemon grass. When we planted it, it wasn't an official "Pam plant". It just grew like mad and every now and then we'd cut a stalk when the Asian recipe we were cooking called for lemon grass stalks, chopped. 

Then, late last year, when my leg was in a cast, I was sidelined and Pam was looking after the garden, the lemon grass needed cutting back. It looked wonderful though, sending up super tall grassy flower spikes high into the air. But to keep the lemon grass clump down to a manageable size and keep it producing those juicy stalks, it needed cutting back. "I guess we could get someone in to do it" I foolishly suggested. "Nonsense, what do you have to do?"  

And that's when the lemon grass became Pam's plant. After describing what was involved in cutting back the big, tall, unruly clump of tropical grass, I thought I had put Pam off the idea of doing it herself. Then one morning I could hear telltale sounds coming from the garden. Clip, snip, clip clip. Foliage rustling. More clipping ... she was in there! The clump was a decent size, made up of three plants. It'd be no surprise if a tiger sprang out of the foliage in a surprise manoeuvre.

But in no time at all Pam had conquered the lemon grass clump, reducing the jungle from six feet tall down to a clump of obedient 12-inch stumps.

That photo of the lemon grass flower heads was taken this morning. I'm almost of a mind to ask Pam if, come October, when it's time to cut it back again, would Pam like to do the honours?

I'm afraid those days are over. She has proven that there's no job she can't tackle in the garden. It's just that with a willing fool standing next to her who's keen as mustard to get stuck into all the gardening jobs, why would she?

No, we're back to our happy zone. Me covered in dirt, her keeping an eye on things.

The 10-Year Rewind – Part 21 – Tiny Tots

Every day this month I am looking back on the 10 years since I started this blog in June, 2008. Part 21 is this one — Tiny Tots — from October 2014, which features some gorgeous artwork by my talented partner in gardening and life, Pammy.

All sorts of spring flowers in our garden are coming out right on schedule, and the tiny ones Pammy and I have been looking closely to spot have finally made their appearance. They're so small that if you stand back a few feet you can't see them. You have to get up close … very close.

Spanish moss, or Tillandsia usneoides.

This enormous log photobombing my Spanish moss pic is
the tip of a toothpick. It illustrates nicely how small these
Spanish moss flowers are.

The flowers form at foliage junctions.

Though small, they're perfectly formed, complete with a
little yellow centre of pollen. Haven't exactly seen the
bees making a beeline for the Spanish Moss yet, though.

Just in case you're not familiar with Spanish
moss, it's that bromeliad which is also known
as old man's beard, for an obvious reason.
It's an 'air plant' that is not a parasite on its
host plant. Instead, it gets all its nutrients
from the air and rain. Here's it's thriving, hanging
off the branches of our Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream'.

Pammy loves this plant, and has done several paintings of both the plant and the flower. And so, to finish off our little celebration of this little cutie, here are two of Pammy's Spanish moss flower paintings, one a lovely little portrait of the flower itself, and the second (one of my favourites) an imagined microscope-eye's view of the foliage, where yet again Pam has created something which seems abstract at first glance yet is also realistic – it's one of the themes in her painting which I enjoy the most.

'The Reality', © Pamela Horsnell 2013

'Living and Breathing', © Pamela Horsnell 2013

Nature's pretty clockwork

Spanish moss flowering again? Must be late October in Sydney. While you couldn't set your clocks by these plants, you could set a calendar by them. 

Here's one of the extremely tiny beauties this morning. Each flower is less than a quarter-inch (5mm) across and you would definitely miss them if you didn't go looking for them. Fortunately for Pammy and me, we know to stay on the lookout for them once October rolls around, and over the last two weeks we could see the minuscule flower buds forming.

The flower pictured above is part of this mass of Spanish moss, which is growing at almost alarming rates, dangling from the branches of our olive tree.

This unusual second location for our massed moss was forced on us by circumstances. This large wodge of old man's beard (Spanish moss's other common name) once thrived on a large grevillea shrub, which collapsed and died last year. The wire framework attached to the walls was once home to a very unproductive, and rapidly fading, passionfruit vine, and so this was our solution. It's working OK, too. Most of the Spanish moss is clinging to the wires and seems to be slowly growing. My big contribution to its health is to regularly water it with a mist spray, if there hasn't been any rain.

Finally, I've added some small strands of Spanish moss to the newly planted fern garden out at the front of our house. They're hanging in there, but it's still a bit early to tell if the Spanish moss is growing yet.

One good short-term effect of the new strands of Spanish moss in the front garden is that they will add to the spooky Halloween look that the marauding, lolly-hungry kids will hopefully like to see on October 31.

I think I might raid our big backyard stores of Spanish moss this weekend and beef up the front garden's spookiness rating ... 

I'm sure that by late October next year, all these fine whisps of moss will be thicker, longer and, if you look carefully, dotted with tiny green flowers.

From disgraceful to graceful

While I spend an inordinate amount of time tending to my backyard, I am afraid I am guilty of neglecting my front yard. It's so easy-care that I don't water it, and feeding is a once-a-year thing. And guess what? It looks neglected ... in fact parts of it are a disgrace, and so recently, at Pam's prompting, I've given part of the front yard a much-needed makeover.

Here's a photo of how it looks, if you're a pedestrian in our street. That enormous blue-grey thing is a "groundcover" Cootamundra wattle (Acacia baileyana) that doesn't like to be confined by walls and so has grown into a 2m tall, 4m wide spreading monster. I have to cut it back regularly. However, the truly disgraceful thing is what was growing under the wattle: weeds, lots of weeds.

While I am not averse to publishing weed photos on my blog, it's usually done in the interests of either "what weed is that?" or "gosh I hate this weed". Today's weed photo is a simple 'hang your head in shame Jamie" shot of a neglected, weedy patch that's largely out of sight ... well, out of sight if pedestrians don't look as they walk by.

Two hours and eight bags of wood chip mulch later, it looked like this. Much better.

Pammy's great idea was to grow ferns under the dappled shade of the wattle, and so I went fern hunting. The little pots at the front are from Bunnings, Australia's hardware/homeware/garden warehouse behemoth retailer. The taller things at the back are from a local old Greek guy who sells all sorts of plants from his backyard. These look like fishbone ferns, they're considered a weed by many but they almost certainly won't die no matter what. 

I also found a great source of ferns at a little garden centre in South King Street in Newtown. The staff there were lovely, knowledgeable and I wish I had bought everything from them. If you live in my Sydney inner-west area, do check out this nursery. It's near the intersection with Alice Street, you can't miss it. Nice place to shop.

Next I adopted my old boss, Don Burke's great garden design/planting principle of "put and look". All you need to do is get all your plants in pots, and put the pots where you think they should go, then see how they look, then rearrange them until you've got the spacings, heights and other factors sorted. Then go around and plant the pots where they are. Works a treat.

Here's how it all looks when planted out. I'm not sure how big everything will grow, but that doesn't bother me much, as I'm also not sure which ones will survive and thrive, and which ones will die. I know the fishbone ferns won't die ...

... and I am also confident that the bird's nest fern (the one at the back with the wider foliage) will also not die and will probably grow quite big, at least 1m in all directions, up across and sideways.

As soon as I saw the label on this little guy "Macho fern" I had to have it. Whether it lives up to its tough-buy name is another matter, but I bought two and so I'll let them duke it out with the elements over the coming summer.

While I have tried to choose ferns with different shapes and forms of foliage, for variety, I decided a bit more foliage colour would be a welcome addition. Now, this next photo below is of my "hopes" not of what I planted. Projectionist, next slide please ...

Regular readers of my blog with excellent memories might recognise this Begonia maculata and its wonderful spotty foliage (and pretty white dangling earrings of white blooms) as it was my Garden Amateur Plant of the Year for 2015. Sadly, these were its glory days when it loved its first Sydney spring and summer, after being planted out as one of Pam's ex-office plants that grew too well under her care. The last two winters haven't been kind to it, but it is still alive, and so my brilliant plan is to take numerous cuttings from the parent plant and hope that a few of them grow on to become a chip off mum's award-winning block.

And so this is how they looked yesterday. A bunch of cuttings (there are several more). To cover all options I have some cuttings in pots in a mini greenhouse, I have also shoved several more straight into the front garden soil, saying a hearty "good luck" to them all. And a few more will sit in jar of water, in the hope that roots will sprout that way (my Googling of begonia propagation says it's a good bet).

As well as adding a dash of begonia magic, I've raided our plentiful supplies of Spanish moss, and now the craggy undersides of the wattle are festooned with thin tresses of grey Spanish moss. Good luck to them, too, I say.

So my job is to break a habit of the last several years and actually get out there into the front garden much more often, turn on the hose and make sure all the ferns get a goodly drink. If it all goes well, I am sure I will provide an update in a few months' time. 

The mossy wall

I'm not sure about you, but coming up with a plan can take me ages, and then at the last moment, just before I'm about to implement the agreed PLAN A, I come up with what I convince myself is a much better PLAN B, and that's what happened with our plans for "what to do with all that Spanish moss" on the weekend. 

To cut to the chase, here's what we did, pictured below. We've stuck it on a wall, or rather, hung it on a wire trellis on a wall.

Originally, we were going to distribute the Spanish moss in batches to every available spare tree branch on our olive, lemon, lime and frangipani trees. All this was made necessary by the demise of the moss's former home, a nice big old grevillea which blew over in a storm.

At the same time we were relocating our moss, PLAN C was to buy a replacement climber to plant under the wire trellis which has, for the last few disappointing years, supported Australia's least productive passionfruit vine. I pulled down the passionfruit vine in December, and we originally thought we'd plant something safe, such as a star jasmine climber.

The wire trellis is very solid, mounted on bolts drilled into this brick wall, with the wires fairly taut. And so I've just stuffed goodly handfuls of Spanish moss behind the wires, and draped the tresses over the front. We've already had two rainstorms and a fair bit of wind, and almost none of it has blown off, so it's "so far so good".

Our Spanish moss grows like crazy here, and that's because I water it a lot. We draped some light strands in our olive tree a year or so ago, and with regular watering they are now wonderful, thick manes of the stuff. As the the wall of moss is next to our thirsty lemon tree, I am sure I won't forget to give it a good, light spray whenever I'm in that part of the garden.

The only way we'll know if this idea works is if it works over a decent period of time. If it does, expect an update in a year's time. And if it turns out to be a dud, I'll let you know about that, too. But somehow I think it's going to work ... I'm a bit tragic like that when when I come up with my last-minute PLAN Bs.

Frangipani 'Serendipity'

Replacing a major plant in our garden always leads to a small series of what Pammy and I jokingly refer to as "committee meetings". In this case the vacancy was created by the demise of our Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream' which was split into two floppy, despondent, sodden halves during a fierce storm a few months ago.

Since then the committee has met a few times, and eventually we decided a second frangipani would be the perfect choice for the spot, which is very close to our covered pergola, where we do all our summer entertaining. Cool shade and tropical fragrance in summer, lots of leafless light getting through in winter, the perfect size of small tree too, and an easy-care beauty that loves being in Sydney. Win, win, win, win, win!

But what kind of frangipani? What colour? Well, it turned out that Pammy found the perfect replacement by a process of serendipity, and here it is.

This isn't its official name, but I am thinking of this as Frangipani 'Serendipity'. 

Here's how Pammy found it: she opened a gate leading to a local art studio run by a ceramicist, Lisa (where Pam teaches painting), and there it was, in a pot, with a modest price tag on it. It was easily the nicest of a gaggle of about a dozen frangipanis Lisa's daughter had for sale, part of a fund-raising effort for her school. The plant itself was a cutting taken from the same coloured frangipani growing in the garden behind Lisa's art studio. Pammy texted me to say "I've found our frangipani" and later that day it was home at our place.

Here it is in all its shapely glory. With this start, our serendipitous find should grow into a beautifully shaped small tree over the next decade or so. 

Now, 'Serendipity' is one of my favourite words because of the story behind its meaning. The word itself was invented by Horace Walpole in 1754 (says my Oxford Dictionary), in his story "The Three Princes of Serendip". Now, Serendip was the old name of Sri Lanka (in between it was Columbo) and the meaning of serendipity is the "faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident." Walpole was thinking that coming across Serendip was a delightful discovery, and all of my friends who have visited Sri Lanka assure me he was right — it truly is a delightful place, when it's at peace with itself.

A much less happy tale is the demise of our poor old grevillea. The storm split it in two at the base, and it slowly died off over the next few months. It had been the frame for wearing our ever-growing tresses of Spanish moss, and eventually, a few years from now, we hope our new frangipani will do the same job. Pictured here is the sad sight today, with the bare branches held up by props. 

So, in the meantime, my first task is to redistribute all the Spanish moss evenly amongst our other backyard trees: a lime, a lemon, an olive and our other frangipani. Then it'll be a chore to dig out the grevillea, and finally a pleasure to plant out Frangipani 'Serendipity'.

Pammy loves our existing frangipani tree, which also has a similar history to our new one, in that the cutting comes from a friend, Krissy's, garden. Krissy is a former workmate of mine, and is the sister of another workmate and Pam's music-loving pal, Zora, so it's a tree with a close, personal connection that is important to us both. Our new frangipani comes from Lisa's studio where Pam has spent many many hours teaching art courses. So both our frangipanis have a special, personal history (which is why growing and sharing plants from cuttings is a beautiful way to enjoy a garden full of living memories). 

Of course Zora & Krissy's frangipani is an el-classico yellow and white one, while Lisa's frangipani has a blush of pink, as well as yellow and white ... 

... and both of them will look lovely on a rainy morning ...

... and both will smell tropically divine on a sunny day.

Getting misty over Spanish moss

Here's a good example of how hard it is to see the tiny flowers of our Spanish moss. Every year, around early November, our Spanish moss bursts into bloom. We know that, and so at this time of year I go looking for them. But the first time I looked over our Spanish moss this year, I didn't see any. I wasn't looking hard enough.

It turns out that this season's flowering hasn't been a great one, but I was wrong — the tiny flowers were there, but they weren't as numerous, that's all.

Standing back a few feet from the plant, they are so hard to spot. You need to look for little flecks of green. The flowers themselves are about a quarter of an inch (4-6mm) long and wide, perfectly formed, green petalled with a maroon base, and a very very tiny little fleck of yellow pollen in the centre, just like all the big flowers in our garden.

Now, I do have a theory about why the Spanish moss's flowering is so meagre this year, and I think it's because of disturbance. For the last few years, we've draped our Spanish moss all over our Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream' (and yes, it does look a bit spooky). 

Sadly, this year the Grevillea started to die off, due to a fungal rot within its trunk and branches. And in a big storm, big parts of it fell over. 

So, instead of removing the grevillea, we have trimmed off all the dead and dying bits, propped it up with metal stakes and a bit of strategic binding here and there, and it's now a bare-branched framework for our Spanish moss. 

It won't last forever. It might not even last a year or more, but Pammy and I love our Spanish moss and so we're happy with this temporary fix, and long may it last! Of course it's the first thing friends comment on when they step out into our backyard.

This year, instead of enjoying yet another blissful 12 months draped over the same, familiar branches, every last part of the Spanish moss has been disturbed and rearranged. And that's my theory to explain why its flowering has been so modest.  

Our clumps of the stuff thrive here, and there is one useful tip I have for anyone wondering how to grow it. Water it often. Yes, water it often with a fine mist.

Spanish moss thrives in humid zones of the warm, wet parts of southern USA, Central America and South America, and so I try to replicate those steamy conditions with regular misty sprays of water. I have one of those hose attachments which have a dial, so you can easily change from a shower, to a mist, to a jet of water, and so on. And our Spanish moss loves its misty showers.

A friend the other day said "we've always called that an air plant" and they're right, but that leads people to think they don't need to do anything whatsoever to these plants. In a sense they're right, as Spanish moss will soldier on fairly well in a mild, well-rained-on climate like Sydney, but with regular misting the stuff multiplies like crazy.

A little discovery

The simple act of finding something delightful is one that I never tire of, and I know Pammy feels the same way. We're often saying to each other "hey, come and have a look at this" when one of us discovers something worth sharing out in the garden.

Other times, instead of marching in triumphantly bearing the latest "news", I like to take the other tack and let Pammy share in the secret delight of discovering the same thing I had just discovered, but all by herself. 

This time, while she was busy elsewhere in the house, I was out in the garden and spotted the first Tillandsia (Spanish moss) flower of the season. And so I snipped off a bit of the plant with its flower and just left it on the desk in her studio, for her to "discover" when she wandered into that room. Here is the little cutie.

The Spanish moss flowers around this time of year, and so the
discovery of this year's flowers was not a major surprise.
It was more a matter of relief that they had finally appeared,
as they usually flower in mid to late October, and so early
November is getting a little bit late for them.

The first time we discovered these tiny flowers was a thrill,
and we did it by accident. Several years ago I just happened to
take some photos of the plant and, only when I opened the
photos on my computer screen, did I notice little green flecks.
So I went outside, got very very very close to the plant and called
out "Hey Pammy, come and look at this!"

Last year I used a toothpick to give you some idea of the small
size of a Spanish moss flower. This year, as I was in Pam's
studio, I grabbed a pencil for the same scale effect.

Out in the garden, stand back five feet and you probably won't
see a thing, apart from a tangle of lightly hairy silver "beard".

And here's the Spanish moss itself this cool, soggy spring afternoon. It's draped from the branches of our grevillea, which itself has grown a bit scrappy and bare-branched at its lower levels over the years. Without the Spanish moss the grevillea would look pretty ordinary, but it is the perfect framework from which to drape the long shawls of whispy grey beard, and between the two of them they're a lovely team of plants. 

The Spanish moss itself is thriving here. I always give it a light spray whenever I water the garden, to give the Spanish moss the feeling that it's in Louisiana (or Georgia, or Mississippi, or Florida ...) where it's always a bit steamy. Come to think of it, Sydney is pretty steamy in summer, too, but the extra watering I've given it in the last two years has really seen it grow better than ever.