Working from the garden studio

We’ve spent a lot of time together outside these past few weeks and we’ve really enjoyed working on the vegetable garden that has been lying fallow for way too long. Ten bags of chicken manure were dug in and left for a few days and we were lucky when overnight rain helped wash it in. Earlier this week I came up to the kitchen where Cathy and Ali were having coffee with the news that the first tiny seedlings had appeared and we’ll continue to check them every day to observe their progress. Our collective eyes are all on the baby brush tail possum that has made a warm home in the tool shed roof – we warn him/her daily to stay away from the veg or else…

Freshly planted seed beds in the vegetable garden

Luckily we are making the most of our splendid isolation – on fine evenings we’ve been lighting the outdoor fire for apperitivo, enjoying shared meals, wine and stories. We’re basking in the camaraderie, in a job well done. Our backs and arms are weary from clipping, raking and carrying barrows full of clippings from the garden out to the bonfire in the paddock that we will put a match to in the next few weeks – and it feels wonderful.

Outdoor fire

I know a lot of people are working from home, staring out the windows at their gardens and if you need help please let us know. We can talk on the phone, FaceTime, send texts and emails. We’ve even designed gardens in other countries in this way, and with technology the way it is it’s not all that hard. Think of it as an exciting project.

This pandemic has made us all think differently, it’s made us appreciate what we have and to look to our homes as sanctuaries for our families. Our gardens have restorative powers, and it’s exactly when I returned home from rehabilitation after my own accident almost eight years ago.

When times are tough sink your hands into the soil and feel the heal.

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Austrostipa elegantissima

Austrostipa ramosissima

I’m an aficionado of grasses, I championed them thirty years ago at my nursery in Sydney and have been a fan of them ever since and as with the last post I wrote on lilies I buy new ones and experiment every time I see one I don’t have. Some grasses have been wonderful surprises and others dismal failures and this is why I trial them before incorporating them into my designs. I have a theory that if a plant grows without any love and attention it could quite possibly be an ugly thug, and a garden by its definition requires a degree of nurturing, and along this thought track a garden plants need to be nursed along to a degree or the plants are quite possibly weedy. Grasses especially fall into this category; if they perform best in reasonably well mulched and cared for soil and need the occasional a splash of water to look at their best they wont become a bushland pest where the growing conditions are often dry and inhospitable. I grow a lot of plants in my garden and every now and then because of lack of space I rip things out of the garden and start afresh but I like to think it’s a bit of a Noah’s ark too – a place where plants once popular, and now no longer fashionable can find a home and be resurrected in new planting schemes – and so it is with two Australian native grasses being Austrostipa ramosissima and Austrostipa verticillata. Both of these I grew thirty years ago, got sick of and they’ve come full circle and I’m captivated by their featheriness and ease of cultivation. I’ve paired the former with tall growing dahlias and the latter by the swimming pool where I can watch them bend and sway to the whim of the winds.

Grasses are fast growing and very easily grown but without any maintenance they can look a bit average within a few years so I slice them down totally – and I mean right to ground level every few years and this keeps them looking fresh.

Two grasses that I’ve trialed a for a few years now are Sporobolus airioides and Pennisetum Red Buttons. The Sporobolus is coming into its own mid summer and Red Buttons is the first to flower in early spring.

Sporobolus airiodes

Pennisetum Red-Buttons

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Lilies have always besotted me – yes they’re a bit of work but I enjoy the seasonal task of tying in the fast lengthening stems to stakes and canes as their blooms are irresistible. I tend to leave the corms in the soil from year to year but I’ve learnt over progressive years that lilies don’t like too much shade so as the garden grows and my trees grow creating more shade the lilies are best lifted and relocated to full sun locations which gives me the opportunity to experiment with colour combinations in plant `marriages’. I have rather a lot of lilies about the place but every year I scan the catalogues for new introductions and this year as with last year and the year before I added to my collection. Not all are successful for more than a few seasons and I can say that my lily addiction is a learning curve – that I will use the ones that delight me by performing well in the gardens we design, and that others benefit from my failures. I’m hoping that with ensuring years L. African Queen becomes a firm favourite because I’m loving its demure ripe mango coloured trumpets and the combination of this fruity coloured bloom with a dwarf crepe myrtle that I saved from a demolition site some years ago.

Lilium African Queen

There’s another that I’ve had growing for maybe ten years and I know that it’s growth is in decline because of the shade and competition from an overhead liquidambar but so far I’ve been lazy and with a little luck I will find a fresh patch of soil at the very end of summer when the corms hit dormancy and finally relocate them. This liy is named `White Fox’ and I have really enjoyed its fragrance and the present combination of Peter Lundberg bronze sculpture and the curiously coloured Strobilanthes gossypinus ‘Persian Shield’ or pewter plant.

Lilium White Fox

There are a sprinkling of deep red L. `Nightflyer’ are beginning to display their extraordinary colour and in the orchard Lilium `Leslie Woodriff’ are swelling in size daily and should be open by Christmas Day.

Lilium Nightflyer

It’s early summer yet the bushfires have been especially frightening this year with much of our district charred and blackened, but thankfully, so far at least we have escaped without damage and with this we are blessed. Today I have some time away from my design work to write a rare post and in case I run out of time this year I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and all the best for a prosperous New Year.

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We’ve been flat out working on some interesting, yet challenging projects and sometimes it’s important to step back and smell the roses – to spend a little time appreciating what we have. Down in the lower part of the orchard where the golden afternoon sun brings out the inner glow of the pomegranate trees there’s a patch of purple flowering Salvia purpurea that I usually would never look at but today it’s looking rather splendid, pairing up with Salvia Velour White set against the dormant branch structure of an old weeping mulberry. An unsung beauty.

It’s Cathy’s birthday today and soon it will be time to pop a champagne cork for a little celebration and I’m taking an early mark and signing out early.

Salvia purpurea

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The paths are strewn with fallen leaves, the weeds are growing like there’s no tomorrow and the garden surprises me every week with a new appearance – often unscheduled and unexpected.

The days have been unseasonably warm with only a few coolish nights and the fireplace inside remains unlit but the garden is showing signs of impending cold. We lit the bonfire a few weekends ago, quickly burning the remains of last summer’s pruning. A little colour has appeared on the trees but it’s the aloes, salvias and grasses that are the real heroes – well so far at least. There are sweet subtle scents wafting up from the orchard where the old loquat tree is in flower and the berries on the hawthorn are glossy and bright.

Soon it will be time for the annual clean up with the Cornerstone Landscaping crew and the garden can be put to bed for the winter, but until then I’ll embrace the season…

Aloe First Gold, Eragrostis spectabilis and Sedum Autumn Joy

Stipa elegantissima, Aloe Copper Showers and Yucca recurvifolia

Leonotis ocymifolia – or it could be L. nepetifolia and artichoke seed heads

Salvia semiatrata 

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This is my garden, nothing happens and then one little plant puts up it’s hand, it’s game on and they’re off.

As you know I love a bit of wildness in the garden. I appreciate order but I want to know that the garden is alive and has a mind of its own.

The trick is to know what to let go and what to rein in…but if you’re like me and you think it’s just too hot two control the disorderly you can also let it go until cooler autumn days

It’s stinking hot today – too hot to do anything outside. Ive already been to Bunnings early for supplies, whipper snipped the edges and watered the needy. Now I’m in the studio where I’m cool, so I’m just going to splash out with some images from my garden because I have the time to do so…

Salvia leucanthe, Miscanthus Cabaret (variegated leafed grass), Dracaena draco and Miscanthus nepalensis

From front to back                                                                                                 Miscanthus Adagio, Rosa Autumnalis, Xanthorrhoea glauca, Foeniculum vulgare Purpureum, Japanese box swirls, horizontal elms and Magnolia grandiflora

Miscanthus Cabaret with Cereus peruvianus

A dwarf crepe myrtle I have no name for with Cereus peruvianus, tall Agave weberi in flower and a lot of other wild flowery things…

Miscanthus nepalensis, Protasparagus meyerii, Kalanchoe orgyalis and Agave vilmoriniana

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An Agave weberi stem laden with similar blooms fell onto the lawn yesterday afternoon when Cathy was mowing the lawn and I had to sever it at the base, and later this week week when it’s not so hot I will dig what’s left of the plant out of the garden with Adrian. I have a splendid collection of healthy young plants which have sprung from the base so I’m not too distressed – and if I were I could do absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening.

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We’re ridiculously busy designing gardens in the studio, which is another reason why my urge to write has been quelled, and it’s spring so the telephone never stops ringing!

We have Cathy’s sister and my brother in law from South Africa arriving in  a few weeks and our good friends from France as well, and Cathy and I have been gardening, getting things ready for lazy afternoons, and new faux wicker chairs on the deck under the camphor laurel are tempting us to sit on them for long lazy lunches, games or petanque’ and glasses of rose’. Without rain the paddocks are parched and when you walk over them you hear the brittle leaf blades and stolons snapping. Trees freshly planted throughout winter need buckets of water carried out to them or they’ll soon perish and this is what we do – we show them the love now and they’ll reward us in years to come with welcome shade.

The familiarity of my garden is comforting and I like the repetition of seasonal jobs. Each year the lilies appear from the bare earth and this week I staked the, tied a stem to each cane and sat one of my treasured antique terracotta pots on top. Each week I will revisit the lilies and if they have grown sufficiently I’ll add another twist-tie.

Cercis Forest pansy and newly staked lilium

Zucchini have been planted in the vegetable garden and rocket seeds for summer salads – I just hope the possums don’t eat them before I do.

Hippeastrum are one of those old fashioned plants that appear in old gardens and these are just another plant I find hard to resist when I find one I don’t have. Usually I’m fanatical about nomenclature and want the correct latin name on every plant I have but with hippies I know a few, others are known as Gail’s hippie because that’s who gave me the bulbs and then there’s the cream and red stroppy one that reminds me of a big girl wearing a dress that’s too tight and bright on race day…take a look you can guess what one I mean.

parrot amaryllis – Hippeastrum psittacinum

Hippeastrum papilio

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The cooler days are perfect for pottering about and I’m moving plants to new positions in the garden where I hope they will look and do better next season. As the garden matures there’s less sun – and things that once thrived like the Lilium `Black Beauty’ outside the bedroom window aren’t performing and I need to find somewhere now sunnier. I have been shovelling barrows of muck from the chook cage to mulch precious plants that need a boost and this gives me a satisfaction that’s out of proportion with the process itself.

Salvias too are hitting their straps, and almost every one is in bloom which delights the bees and also small birds like the Eastern Spinebills which feed on the flower nectar. It always surprise me when the jonquils begin to open, and later this afternoon I will pick a bunch that will fill the house with their heady sweet smell.

This is the season when the ornamental grasses really shine and last winter I ordered boxes full of unfamiliar varieties to trial. I never recommend plants in our designs that I don’t know first hand so I’m always on the lookout for plants I haven’t grown before and last winter one of the plants I purchased was Miscanthus nepalensis and I think that this one will have merit. I have grown it in an area which is less that hospitable and considering this I’m happy with it’s golden tassels, and in a few more years it may find a way into our designs.

Camellia sasanqua `Yuletide’

Salvia `Anthony Parker’

Miscanthus nepalensis

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I feel the abundance when I walk in the orchard and the pomegranate is weighted down with heavy fruit, the little round Courgettes in the vegetable garden are ready to pick and these were grown from seed sent to me from a friend whom lives in France. The fennel is heavy in golden flower and the seeds are ripening and yesterday when it was hot the air was heavy with it’s aniseed scent.

There’s a brightness to the garden. Brilliant coloured flowers abound. Summer is a show-off.

Time for another espresso…

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Lilium Black Beauty

More lilies are in bloom too. There’s my favourite tiger lilies

Lilium lancifolium

Lilium lancifolium Flore Pleno

and one I’m not so enamoured with which is the double flowering tiger lily which gets another years reprieve until I’m sure I don’t like it and ready to replace it

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Yesterday was a long hot day, we had just swum in the pool – and there was a slim chance there would be some well deserved rain, I was standing on the verandah cooking sausages on the bbq with Robbie my brother in law and I looked down to the nursery and took the first image, and then I ran back towards the studio to where there are some really lovely Kalanchoe with texture like of brown velvet. It partners perfectly with a pomegranate. It’s summer weather, even though it’s not officially summer yet, time to enjoy everything the outdoors has to offer.

Banksia Roller Coaster, Kalanchoe orgyalis, Yucca recurvifolia and Punica granatum

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As I walked alone through the deserted garden that was full of strangers on Sunday I caught a whiff of cloves and scanned the garden for the flower that was responsible. The Jasminum multipartitum I had tied to an iron frame we has relocated in winter was in bloom and in all the rush it had been forgotten. Many parts of the garden continue without my interference, and surprise me with their beauty, like the gallica rose in the orchard, a cutting I snitched from a Victorian grave in Braidwood many, many years ago which flowers once each year without annual pruning – I don’t spray any pest or fungal spots in my garden, they have to look after themselves in this way so I know what I have is tough and resilient.  This rose also has a powerful old rose scent. (disregard the `disobedient’ weed growing in the middle of the rose image)

Thank you for all the people that came along to the open day and purchased a book, and thanks also if you donated something to Greyhound Rescue NSW because we raised over $800

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I’m very fortunate to have many amazing gardeners that help me in the months which precede this day, so despite the name of my book I sincerely hope that my garden will appear suitably primped and preened.

This is the first blog post for some time as my new website has been under construction – now up and running, so take a peek it looks fantastic, thanks Tim.

Punica granatum `Legrelliae’

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I grow mine in pots which date back to the 1940s and as well as for the flowers I grow these for their curious leaves. These appear soon after the flowers are spen, and there are just two of them to each bulb. They are like enormous tongues which hang over the edges of the pots.

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