A walk around my garden

8 Jun '06 6:19 pm

Just sorting out in my head all the vernacular terms you use is an adventure in itself - let alone the kinship of similar places halfway around the world. How familiar your phrase 'deer protection and irrigation first'! Not to mention an awareness of how addictive the forum is! But we are in the midst of exams, so I am limiting my actual time on the forum, and getting my marking done - but my mind races best when I am under pressure!

24 Jul '06 1:43 am

On a beautifully sunny afternoon the dogs and I set off to explore the farm for the first time, it feels to me, in months. In the cottage garden most of the winter clearing has been done, cuttings will this week be taken of the ever-willing Hybrid Musk rose Penelope, and everything is looking very neat – except for the Clematis montana at the entrance that really must be pruned back after flowering in spring: can’t neglect it again this year! And the pruned shrub has just been used for cuttings – it needs to be cut back to near ground level to sprout its wands that form a light-catching, dark-hearted fullstop which I adore. It grows wild on the farm, but I can not identify it from any of my books. I want to popularise it, for it is the easiest of plants.

It is now truly winter, according to some the coldest on record, although I was away for the worst of it. I think it has been MUCH colder – it is rather a back-to-normal winter for me. What I saw of the garden confirmed this: much damage, but already much recovery. I can’t find a single plant that was actually killed by the cold. Here and there the first signs of spring awakening are to be seen, with tentative azaleas, and magnolias revelling in the last few mild weeks. Even the camellias, at the best of times tending to cold damage of their winter blooms, are looking quite decent. But cold is on its way again, so I photograph the magnolias as they defy the weather and their moribund appearance to startle me once again with their soft, fleshy flowers. I photograph some camellias too, but present you only with what I find their most endearing quality – the reckless way in which they discard their still youthful blooms. It makes me think of the motto ‘live hard and make a beautiful corpse’; alas, too late for me to practise now!

As the clouds start to drift in I wonder if it is the cold front arriving. Perhaps the magnolias will be browned by tomorrow… But the clouds help decide the shot I include of what was for weeks the heart of autumn in my garden…

Then I make my way up to the top of the arboretum to survey what is undoubtedly the year’s most important development: whilst I was in Namibia my father started building the wall above the Rosemary terrace! It is all but completed, and my new-garden-focus shifts from the Jewel Garden to the beds on either side of the Rosemary Terrace.

But wait. Let’s use the next pic to pick up on the Walk around my Garden. A quick reminder: top centre is the living room gable, and that window looks out over the Ellensgate garden. On the axis from the front door lies Alfred’s Arches, with the Anniversary Garden to the left, then down some steps and to our right lies the Rosemary Terrace. There you can see the new wall. At the bottom of the big lawn on the very right of the pic a staircase is still being built and beyond it the wall continues. The bed above the wall is 35m long up to the steps and 5m deep. It has developed over the years as a rather short season display area for self-seeders and easily divided plants: foxgloves (to stay) and yellow coreopsis and rudbeckias (to go elsewhere)

My plans here? The soil is sandy so drainage will be good. It slopes north-west and will be warm to hot. I want to plant it for year round interest (so not too many herbaceous perennials!), with plants that must be low enough not to spoil the view of the dam (OK, Liza, pond!) I want an overall colour focus on muddy pinks, purples and mustards – think day lilies – but with a variety of other colours as well. Yellows and pinks must not be too bright. Shapes must be hummocky, with occasional vertical accents, and varied leaf colour and texture. At regular intervals just above the wall I want tight balls of the plant I mention in the first paragraph. Ages ago I drew up a plant list – based on what I had or could propagate easily – which I must now find and refine. I shall share it with you – meanwhile all ideas are welcome!!! The area beyond the steps and on the very right of the pic forms part of what I rather grandly call the ‘nursery beds’ (makes me think of Great Dixter!) Actually I don’t quite know how it ended up like this, but it does form a handy area for plants in transition. I have no set ideas on how it will look up against the wall…

On the lower side of the Rosemary Terrace the bed is edged with a rosemary hedge which gave the area its name. It was planted from cuttings a year ago, so you have to use your imagination to see it on the pic. This bed, edged on its lower side at the moment with dianella, is 62m long and 4 deep. It is much like the upper bed and includes an expanse of cosmos every year. I want to clear it completely and prepare it for sowing with a seedmix. We have had some wonderful successes with seedmixes and I hope the initial outlay will be amortised by self-seeders for several years thereafter! Below the next terrace, and just above the road to my house, lies what is now a scraggly soily smudge. That is the winter version of our very-successful-but-in-need-of-rejuvenation canna bed. It is planted with groupings of cannas with various leaf colours. If I could, I would remove their flower heads, so successful are the swathes of leaves – huge 3m diameter circles and curves of bold leaf patterns and colours. I shall still do a post on my cannas!

Whilst we can see some of it, let us continue the walk around the garden. On the left the Rosemary Terrace ends in a viburnum hedge, just trimmed (but not yet expertly – there is a new man on hedges…) behind it and below the right-hand half of the Anniversary Garden, is the site for the Jewel Garden. (It seems as if enough bricks remain for me to not have to buy in…) Then to the left of the Anniversary Garden is potentially my grandest statement of all: the Yew Walk. Take a look again at the Nursery beds on the right. That dark blob in the middle of it is a Yew -one of four bought 17 years ago that survived. It has finally decided to thrive and is now a solid thigh-high plant. It is mother to all my cuttings, now 6 years old (and as many inches high) They are planted along the yew walk. You want to see me hysterical? It is when Doubly decides that the Yew hedge is in the shade where he would like to lie down and wait for me to finish pottering!

To the left of the Yew Walk lie a few other places we will still visit: the Hedgerow Walk and Sages Walk lie back to back and parallel to the Rosemary Terrace behind the grey branches of the pin oak in the left of the picture. Above them, and including the conifers to the middle left of the pic, is an area my dad planted haphazardly (for him) with a collection of assorted shrubs he bought in the early 80s. For years I considered it no more than a mess - rubbish. Then we did some clearing in the late 90s, and discovered a rather quaintly charming area which I immediately dubbed the shrubbage. All along I incorporated it into the orchestration of gardens that forms the nucleus of the formal gardens – it is a sort of anti-formal garden!

And that, friends, is enough for now. I have caught up with my garden after weeks of neglect.

24 Jul '06 9:42 am

Ah! Spriingtime, Jack!! Yesss!! I love your flowering babies and your romantic, cloudy...dam (pond?)---super photo!

25 Jul '06 4:32 am

Jack,
Where but in the magical world of cyberspace can a person sit at a desk in Oklahoma, USA, and enjoy the beauty of gardens, not only in NZ, but South Africa? And who knows where I will go today? Very Happy

I am captivated by your narratives and the breath-taking photos. one in particular. Your 'Artificial Light' photo is as mystical and fanciful as any I have ever seen. Do you, perchance, allow people to download your photos for desk top pictures, and/or screen savers? I would really appreciate it.

We have no gardens here, only thirteen acres of grassy fields and trees, but I have seen that elusive ray of sun strike a tree time and again. However, due to my amateur photography skills, I can not capture it. This is the closet I have managed to get, and it does not come near doing the scene justice. <sigh>

Looking forward to more 'walks' in your gardens.
Dream Gardener, or should that be, Gardener in my Dreams Only? Sad

Norvona [img][/img]

25 Jul '06 7:12 am

Marking??? as the son of two teachers I remember my parents spending many nights up late scrawling illegible comments on students papers, exams and projects.

jack, I think you should follow moosey's example and retire from teaching before its too late. A career as a full time gardener and travel writer beckons Smile

26 Jul '06 3:40 am

Jack, I'm fascinated by that superbly captured and well-composed image '5 where autumn used to be'. The reflections on the water are so vivid that for a split second, I'd thought that you've posted it upside-down! Rolling Eyes

Thanks for the treat! Very Happy

Norvona: Welcome and thanks for sharing that lovely woodland photo, perfectly titled 'The Spotlight is on' Wink

30 Jul '06 11:55 pm

Hallo all and thanks for the comments! Welcome on board, Norvona! Of course you are welcome to 'pick' my pics! In fact I have friends around the world who use my pics as desktops and screensavers - it was that which first gave me the courage to expose myself so blatently on this forum (he said shyly): ex colleagues teaching in China, ex South Africans in London, friends in France and friends at home... And your pic is lovely, don't put yourself down. It seems, of all the forum friends, your garden is closest in atmosphere to mine. Lets have more pics!

Eggy you joke, but you are spot-on: I am working towards being paid for what I like best (he says once again, modestly) but it is not that simple. In South Africa if you don't look after yourself, the government sure won't unless you are seriously poverty-stricken. And you don't dare end up in a state hospital... so medical aid, pension funds and general financial security are rather important. Besides which, I genuinely am passionate about my job and the children, and doing something for the future of this country, so despite regular niggles, I am not really ready to give up the teaching. Perhaps the future - working on this one too! - will include part-time teaching. Watch this space!

Here is a little post I prepared at home this morning:

Dear friends – a quick thought or two on a wonderful winter Sunday morning – and thought it is, rather than pics, because I left my camera at school and tried as best I could to capture the moments on my cellphone! It was yet another magnificently frosty sunrise, but I was here later than normal and could attempt to catch the sun on the frosted twigs of the Japanese maple, and on the Swamp Cypress that is so serendipitously out of synch with its mates – each year it turns and drops its leaves at the end of winter – and is then the first in leaf again! What is more it remains after 17 years a rounded bush rather than a proud pyramid. Talk of a composition in neutral colours!

Two hours later the dogs and I went for a walk. It was so beautifully sunny on the eastern slope that I took off my sweater and wore only a t-shirt! Despite the frost, there are signs of spring: the first azaleas and the first crab-apples and other blossoms, as well as last week’s magnolias. AND bird cherries and English oaks in leaf…

Then we took a look from the arboretum side at yesterday afternoon’s discovery: remember I mentioned the sole surviving yew – now with its tallest shoot at eye level? Well, it is centred 8m above the new stairs… AND then I discovered the stairs are centred in the other direction on the two huge gumtrees which my mother first claimed as her own when my parents were on honeymoon here. So here is a feeble pic of this conundrum of an axis. I have a sort of psychic belief in the importance of some of the axis in the garden (more about that when I write in October about the Rondel Garden and its old-fashioned roses) – so what do I make of this accidental alignment? Perhaps clip the yew into a ball with a simple circular bed around it and a bench behind it – backed by a winter scented hedge of… a-ha: buddleja auriculata which grows naturally just meters away and incongruously fills the air with summery honey scents in early July! One can sit out there in the winter sun on the 5th of July, my mother’s birthday. Decision taken. Thanks for listening! Must get back to work!

2 Aug '06 2:10 am

Jack, I have enjoyed walking around your garden with you tremendously. I agree with everyone else who has commented on your beautiful photos. You have such a lovely garden with such interesting names for the different areas. All sounds very grand. I envy your garden helpers. I have only me to maintain all my garden areas (although they are not nearly as expansive as yours). I work 8-5 four days a week and then have a three day weekend to get all my gardening and housekeeping chores done. Retirement is just around the corner for me however, and I almost can't wait.

Keep posting those fantastic photos and descriptions of your garden exploits.

Faith

4 Aug '06 3:05 am

Wow wonderful garden, Would like to have one

5 Aug '06 6:13 am

Not to be outdone completely by Moosey and her snow storm, we actually had some weather this week. Our winters are so perfect, frosty at night and sunny by day, that one eventually gets just a little bored... so it was with some anticipation that I heard a serious cold front was due to affect the whole country this week. Naughty boy - don't wish such weather! 300mm in two days in places on the coast, record snow in places inland... and winds here such as I have never known. Our power has been out for 45 hours and counting. Hundreds of trees ended up across the power lines... This afternoon I had the first opportunity in daylight to drive and walk on the farm. I found surprisingly little real damage, only one pine snapped in half in the plantations and another seriously crooked. But the garden seems remarkably intact. Luckily we missed the full force of the wind in our valley. I hear stories of neighbours losing their entire avocado crop, and a newly thinned forest in which 50% of the remaining trees were reduced to matchsticks...

I have retaken the morning tracery shot, but the frost was at ground level only, so the tree is a warm yellow rather than icy blue; I still thought it worth sharing. Fully protected on the stoep (=verandah) from frost and wind, one of the clivias returned by my sister-in-law after I gave them to her some years ago because they battled so with our frost, is in spectacular bloom, blissfully unaware of the battle the rest of nature has been fighting. And cold and blustery it might be, but I could not resist stopping to take a photo of our mountain on the way to work this morning. THen on this afternoon's walk, and after all this wind, I find perfection in a blooming branch... I try not to boast, but this, dear friends, is what is known as a grim day around here.

A walk around my garden

WELCOME AGAIN, JEN!

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Springtime photos

HAVE ENJOYED THE WALKS IN YOUR GARDENS

Marking??? Bahhhh....

Fascinating shots!

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A Walk Around My Garden

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