Life lessons from the garden

It might have been a while since my last blog post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working in and thinking about my garden.  It's such a great time of the year to be in the garden, and just half an hour here or there can brighten up any day and, with my style of garden, have a visible impact.  

Here are some of the things I've pondered while in the garden lately.

1.  Let's face it, mulch doesn't really keep down the weeds.
Controversial?  Perhaps.  It's not that I'm against mulch.  Mulch is great.  But weeds are weeds, and, frankly, if all it took was a bit of nice stuff sitting on top of them to stop them growing, they wouldn't be called weeds.  So, mulch for water retention.  Mulch for the definition it can give a garden.  But you're still going to have to tackle the weeds.  (See also Item #5, below.)

2.  While we're onto mulch, what's with the orange stuff??
Mulch is like fake tan.  If it's not a natural colour, it just looks stupid.  So let's lose the fluoro red and orange stuff, and, for that matter, the black stuff.  Isn't brown an ok colour??

(For the record, my current favourite mulch is a finely shredded eucalyptus mulch.  It's a light bronze shade.  The chunky pine bark mulch I used to prefer suddenly seems too heavy and dark.)  

3.  It's good to have a plan, but...
Mostly, I like to think about and research my plant purchases before I make them.  I like to think about what will work in the different conditions in different parts of my garden, what will work in terms of colour, form, size, etc.  And generally a well-planned garden is going to work better than an unplanned garden.  But sometimes you have to throw out the plan.

Ptilotus exaltatus 'Joey'

Wandering in a little local nursery this morning, I couldn't resist the gorgeous soft flowers of this Ptilotus exaltatus 'Joey'.  I've never seen it before.  All I know about it is what's written on the tag. 

I had to have one.  (Or two, actually.)  But I haven't completely disregarded my plan.  In terms of form, colour and style they fit perfectly with the hot, dry border alongside my driveway.  They're an Australian native, which works with other things in that bed, such as kangaroo paw.  They've got beautiful grey-green foliage, and soft pinkish flowers, which works for my colour scheme.  And they're perfect for the conditions there -- hot and dry, with full to part sun.  

Now, it's just fingers crossed!

4.  It's ok to change your mind.

I would say that I've never been a fan of geraniums.  But recently when I wanted to buy some seedlings for my 3-year-old to plant in her "special pots", I bought some white flowering, ivy-leafed geraniums.  They're hardy, good for pots, and would flower quickly.  Just right for the short attention span of a 3-year-old!

Geranium Spreading White Blush

But I've come to quite like them.  And this morning I bought some more seedlings for myself.  

5.  Sometimes there are no shortcuts
I've mentioned in a previous post that one of the things I inherited with this garden was an oxalis problem.  'Problem' is an understatement.  Left to its own devices, I'm sure the oxalis from my garden would happily take over the world.  I've spent countless hours pulling and digging up these dreaded blighters, and can safely say that even though just pulling them up by their lush green leaves and stems is tempting, it is JUST NOT WORTH IT!

Here's why:

This variety of oxalis makes use of every trick in the book.  The bulbs can hide themselves several inches below the surface.  They split easily, meaning they spread easily.  And they even have that nice juicy looking tuber that I presume helps them survive in extra dry conditions.  

Pulling these guys up from the top without digging out these bulbs and tubers just lets them continue their march to world domination below the soil.  So there are no shortcuts.  The only options is to get in there and dig.  And dig deep.  And throw out heaps of soil as you go, because of all those little babies that break off so easily.

And don't think the mulch is going to keep them down.

When good plants turn bad

I absolutely love the delicate beauty of these gaura 'Siskiyou White', and thought I had the perfect spot for them - across our north-facing front fence.

They have grown - and self-seeded - prolifically, but somehow the whole effect is just not working.  Instead of pretty, upright stalks, they lie flat and twisted, spreading too far onto the footpath.

So they're going to have to go.  Eventually.  

The only question is what to replace them with...

For the love of roses

One thing that would not have enjoyed the climate at our Dandenongs hideaway was roses.  Much as I love roses, I didn't even bother trying.  But when we moved to the 'burbs... well, I might have gone a little rose crazy.

And now that spring is here, it's paying off!

All of my roses were planted about 18 months ago -- three climbing 'Pierre de Ronsard' across the front verandah, and three 'Iceberg' shrub/bush roses along the drive.  The 'Icebergs' were bare-rooted but the climbers were planted from pots.

I couldn't be happier.  Although my photography skills just don't do any of them justice.

Climbing 'Pierre de Ronsard' rose

  

All this in 18 months...

...and even I can make them look good in a vase
('Iceberg' and 'Pierre de Ronsard' with another spring favourite, gorgeous ornithogalum arabicum 'black pearl lily)

I'm an amateur gardener...

...and an even more amateur photographer!  But here are some things that have caught my eye on this beautiful spring day.

This acer palmatum purpureum (weeping maple) survived a couple of years in a large terracotta pot in the Dandenongs, a move to the 'burbs, another two years in its pot, and has now made its home in one of our raised garden beds.  It has survived the move beautifully!  I adore the colour of the foliage, and now that it's not standing up so high in a pot, we can enjoy its colour even more from above.

Acer Palmatum Purpureum

What to do with a hot, sunny, dry strip of flat garden bed alongside a shared driveway?  This bed, against a westerly facing timber fence, used to house alternating "low-maintenance" liriope and nandina domestica (dwarf sacred bamboo).  With lots of room in between for weeds to thrive.  I hated it.  So, section by section, I've been ripping out the boring old stuff and trying to add some colour and texture.  In this section, planted in October 2012, I've planted convulvulus cneorum (silver bush), osteospermum (veldt daisy), and minature anigozanthos (kangaroo paw) in shades of pinkish-grey and deeper pink.  Also growing are some alysum seeds which were sprinkled long ago.  Can't wait to see this bed fill out.

Anigozanthos 'Bush Pearl'

These dichondra 'Silver Falls' were planted in the middle of winter... big mistake!  They struggled on for several months, looking dreadful, but spring has given them new life, and they're finally showing signs that they might do what they're meant to -- cascade over the side of our raised garden beds.  

Dichondra 'Silver Falls'

And finally for today, a snap (pardon the pun!) from my husband's part of the garden -- the vegie garden.  My 3-year-old is very good at eating her vegies, but her desperation to go outside several times a day to look at (and eat) the snow peas is a delight to behold!

Snow peas in the vegie garden

Welcome to Spaces to Grow

So, it seems everyone is blogging these days.  I suppose it's about time I joined in.
Firstly, a bit about me.  I'm a mum of two beautiful girls, aged 3 and 10 months, and also stepmother to a gorgeous 10 year old girl.  Right now I'm at home full-time, but I did go back to work (in public policy research) when my first little one was about 14 months.  And I guess I'll have to go back to work again sometime soon...
I live in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, on a small (450sqm) block of land, in which I'm experimenting and learning, day by day, about garden design.  At the moment I'm a completely untrained amateur gardener, but as I ponder my future before rejoining the workforce after the birth of my second child, I'm giving thought to undertaking some study in landscape design and horticulture.
(As an aside: I'm a bit of a sucker for studying... which really came a surprise to me!  After finishing an undergraduate double degree (Business/Arts) in 1998, I thought I'd never study again.  Then, after finishing a grad dip in health promotion in 2003, I thought I'd never study again.  So I started my Masters in Public Administration in 2006.  After finishing that in 2008, I thought I'd never study again...  Can you see a trend emerging?)

The home we're currently living is the third property I've "owned" (meaning the third the bank has owned on my behalf).  My first was a little one-bedroom flat with a cold, damp, south-facing courtyard, in which I struggled to grow anything at all.  My greatest "garden" success there was some succulents on my kitchen windowsill, and "doing the gardening" meant removing a few dead bits from those every now and then.
My second home - the first with my husband - was in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne.  It was a quarter-acre (roughly 1,000sqm) block - pretty small for a property in the hills - and was home to about 11 enormous mountain ash, which, although beautiful, made sure that nothing ever got much sun, and sucked most of the substantial (even in a drought) rainfall straight out of the ground.  It was a challenging garden!  I had a great time experimenting with shade-friendly plants (hellebores being a perpetual favourite) and had success with Dandenongs staples like rhododendrons, camellias and a stunning dogwood that was my pride and joy.  But I longed to be able to buy all those things that thrive in full sun (including just about all pretty little flowering annuals!).
In 2010, after suffering a little from isolation while at home full-time with my first daughter, and having seen Victoria experience the devastation of the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 (from which the Dandenongs, thankfully, were spared), we decided to re-enter suburbia.  We found ourselves a pretty little weatherboard on a subdivided block in Melbourne's outer east, which needed almost no work inside, but offered plenty of potential outside.
The garden was very neat, and its bare bones were good, but there are only so many "low-maintenance" strappy leaved plants that I can handle.  The garden was full of dietes (described as "virtually unkillable" and a "great choice for lazy gardeners), liriopes (which, when not in flower look a lot like dietes), and had a very immature weeping cherry (prunus) in the centre of a raised garden bed smack-bang in the middle of our north-facing front lawn.  There was a lot of bare dirt, which looked ok when just weeded, but quickly revealed an unimaginable profligation of weeds, particularly the dreaded oxalis.
Since we came here in mid-2010, there's not much about the garden planting that I haven't changed.  The basic shape of the garden -- the raised garden beds -- has not changed, and the pittosporum hedge inside the front fence has been clipped but nothing more.  Even the weeping cherry didn't survive unscathed -- but it did survive a move to a different garden bed...