garden visitors in 2012

photo: "The Shambles" south rose garden

Christmas and family birthdays are just behind us and bus visits to our garden, arranged last year are looming. The benign weather, continual grooming and a deliberate strategy of putting plants into empty spaces has our garden looking the best it has for a while.

We have to keep on our toes not just to have a display for visitors in January but because of our Open Garden Australia opening at Easter , Saturday, Sunday and monday 7th-9th April this year.
A little stroll today identified flowers on just about everything in the long narrow East garden. At one end is an arch with mauve flowering Phaseolus caracalla and at the other an arch of flowering Phaseolus giganteus and a climbing frangipani not ready to display. Old fashioned roses, Salvias, Abutilon and Cannas are in flower along with Eryisum bicolor (wallflower), Mirabilis jalapa (4 O'Clock plant), a very late flowering Quisqualis indica and a big tall clump of Crinum x powellii.
At the south east stone circle garden and walkways along with Hydrangea there are both blue and pink flowering Plectranthus ecklonii and a great crowding in of fresh green growth on our species Camellias, Spiraea, Clerodendrum nutans, Thunbergia erecta and white flowering Orthosiphon stamineus
Never being shy of a challenge we planted three Forsythia x intermedia 'Lynwood Gold' interspersed with single pink and mauve Azaleas along under the cool south side of the house. Colour madness you might say! We shall see what the result is next spring or perhaps the one after. We also planted Deutzia gracilis in and around a garden which is already too busy with Spiraea and white species Camellias and the odd young Pliladelphus mexicanus ? coronarius.
Lastly near the stone circle we planted a tiny Kolwitzia amabilis "Pink Cloud' where we can keep an eye on its early life.
Elsewhere in our busy garden old fashioned roses of all sorts are coverd in bud and bloom, the Agapanthus are just at the end and Hibiscus syriacus of several coloyrs are still flowering.

And so this friday and the following week bus trips are bringing visitors to the garden for an hour or two and we feel that there is quite a lot of colour and interest to see for all tastes. Along with plants mentioned above there is lots of other perennial colour and in our forested areas and tropical foliage plant areas the rain and humidity have interesting new growth on plants which don't normally flower at this time of year. Brugmansias, Iochromas, Cetrodenia, Ipmoea carnea, Bauhinea corymbosa and Lagerstroemia speciosa/ Lagerstroemia indica and in display.
Its raining tonight again but we hope that there some moments of sunshine for our visitors
Michael Simpson