Even though I'm back in Australia, I'm still not back in my garden. Given the unsettled circumstances of my return, @owasco is still babysitting the Garden Journal for the next little while - please give her some love and support for this. If you've missed a winners payout from me, please get in touch with me on Discord. We had a few admin hiccups and I found it totally impossible to keep up when I was travelling and my head full of worry for my family. Please forgive me!
As I'm not home, I thought I'd show you round my folks garden. Trust me, this place would be great for an open garden for visitors but they wont. It's on an acre and is all fully landscaped.
It's Winter, so things are a little sad, but they've just had the driveway re gravelled and the arborists in, so it's looking very neat. The arborists create beautiful 'habitat trees' out of the dead gums - there's about four of them on the property - so they're home for birds. I love their architectural shape.
Leucodendrons feature heavily in my parents garden. The yellow ones catch the moonlight (damn, I have forgotton how beautiful the stars are in Australia!) and the red ones catch your eye. They're pretty drought tolerant and flower all year.
There's quite a few citrus trees - a huge lemon, a lime, a blood orange and a few more. They all need a good feed of magnesium. I come out here daily with Dad and we share a blood orange. I'd really like to plant one when I get home.
The nandina, a type of bamboo I think, is a lovely feature plant - the orange and yellow leaves add colour to the garden all year round.
How cool is this mossy rock with the self seeded succulents?
Various succulents also look great in an Aussie garden.
There's a few decorative things in the garden too, artfully placed pots and so on, and bird baths. It's a real haven for birds here - we spotted a spinebill the other day which I haven't seen before. As I type this, I can hear a magpie singing and I'm wondering when he's going to stop - not that I want him to. He's pretty joyful. My favourite ornament is the Ganesha pond, of course.
I couldn't name all the lovely plants in my parents garden - here is a couple I like. It's predominately natives.
The banksia, however, is unmissable.
The vegetable garden has seen better days. Mum just doesn't have the time or inclination for it as she's busy looking after Dad. There's three compost bays over yonder, and some apple trees that need bringing back to life after we removed some water thieving yukkas.
Dad likes the yukkas, but we don't. There's two in the front garden he jokes we can get rid of when he's gone, but that upsets Mum.
I hope you've enjoyed this tour of my folks garden. It's a beautiful place for me to hang out for a few months. I've gotta go though now - Dad's given me the worst job today, which is pulling out the dead leaves of the New Zealand flax. Grrr. But I can't complain of course. There's only a few more jobs Dad can order me to do.
With Love,
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Your parents have a beautiful garden.
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Beautiful space! That’s a huge compost pile, I’m jealous! I as well would love several citrus trees, blood orange is one of my favorites!
Blood orange is my favorite too.
The entirety of the garden is just sublime, River. Despite the dull sky, which I'm not even adverse to in anyway, I could sit in a garden like this for hours on end if I I had a nice chair with a backrest. All my love to your family. Happy to see you're back to base.🌺
It is a beautiful garden for sitting in, that's for sure. Winter here but when the sun is out we do just that.
Your deep roots to the land has really come through the posts since you have returned to OZ. The empty space your Dad will leave is also evident. It tears me up each post. Stay strong. Much love!
Thanks so much, that's so kind of you to say. Dad and I managed a walk up the front gate in the sunshine today. Precious, precious moments. He will indeed leave a big gap in all our lives.
The garden looks amazing! There are so many wonderful plants growing there, and some of them look really familiar. Some of them look exactly like the ones growing here... Are all of these plants indigenous? So many of these grow wild here with us as well; I know a lot of South African plants grow in Australia and vice versa.
These two plants look exactly like some of the plants growing in my garden also growing in the wild supposedly native in South Africa. I am not sure about their names...
And this below looks exactly like our native Jade Plant... But I can be mistaken. Or I might have been mistaken that these plants are indigenous!
In any case, thank you so much for sharing these wonderful plants!
Yes, a lot of South African plants are here... No surprise, we used to be connected! Proteas and leucadendrons often end up in our gardens and pass for natives... And no one is the wiser!
Oh my, that makes so much sense! It is so interesting really, the whole debate on indigenous and alien species. On this side of the pond, we have so many Australian trees growing, so there are many programs to get them out of the fynbos (protea) fields. These Australian trees make for the best firewood though.
I think what is 'native" is quite fluid over time. We get too caught up with it I think. Sure, if it's totally damaging the existing species, something must be done. But I'm not entirely sure why it's necessary to have pristine native environments at all costs. Look that's not entirely true... I'd get upset with our wildernesses tainted by invading species, but in urban or semi rural environments I think a dandelion or an olive or a protea can be just as valid as a gum tree.
So true yes! I agree 100%. We have forest areas where they previously grew trees for logging and paper and whatever other reasons they used the trees for. But now they are competing with native plants, and this is sad and unnecessary. Wild spaces are getting so small and secluded, that the few we still have should not be invaded by alien species. But in urban areas, the ground and soil are probably not native as well. Funny thing, the indigenous plants (like proteas) struggle in my garden because it is not the right type of soil; so people brought in different soil to plant their gardens.