SoS 13/7
In town for ten days or so, it’s been possible to check on the progressions of the Matchbox Garden. Walking around it takes a whole ten minutes. 🙂 But love and care of same can take as long as a piece of string. I’m sure gardeners out there know what I mean. For example, one of my new auriculas is struggling and as its a new cultivar from a breeder-friend, I am hoping it will survive. Hope comes with necessary research and so the piece of string has no end…
Anyway, here’s my Six on Saturday and the fact is that I could have put more in as spring is starting to push up from beneath the soil. There’s only about 40+ days till spring and less than 100 to daylight saving!!!!
Firstly the back strip against the townhouse wall. The hellebores and miniature cyclamen are flowering. It’s all very ‘one height’ in winter, but there are precious little creeping violets that are establishing and in late spring, the Solomon’s Seal begins to rise from the soil like some frightening green army. By summer it has filled that strip with tall stately arching fronds. In fact it’s normally so lush, one can barely walk along the path. Bearing in mind that the whole Matchbox Garden is just four years old and we’ve already had to dig up this strip for leaking plumbing, I’m begging the cyclamen and hellebores to naturalise. So too, the strappy nerines. The Solomon’s Seal already has.
This potted cyclamen is an unknown variety, one of those ones you pick up on the display stand at the local hardware chain. But I love the way the petals open out. It’s not unlike a little snowdrop I once had whose petals open out like a French nun’s veil.
The magnolia grandiflora is really coming into its own. I look forward to the day it’s at least as high as the fence and can displace the hideous wattle on the other side.
And how’s this for stunning contrast in the shade of the magnolia?
On the other side of the back path are all my slightly rarer hellebores – blacks, doubles, slate greys, white ruffles etc. Some of the blacks are mid-birth.
And in tubs amid black pansies and white primulas, the tulips are beginning to sprout. I tell you, this is such an exciting time of year, despite that there’s snow on Mount Wellington and icy damp showers keep sweeping down the slopes toward us.
And finally, just to show that perhaps anything black in the garden really might not be, this is one of the black pansies with yesterday’s brief sunlight slanting through petals.
I’m sure those who can count will notice I added one extra to my six and I apologise.
In any case, that’s it from me.
Hop over to Mr. P and see who’s showing gorgeous gardens today. It’s a fab way to spend a quiet weekend evening.
The garden is looking stunning Prue ?
Thanks Libby. It is winter sparse though, but it’s trying hard and I love it for that!
As I said to Barbara, your winter seems to be going well. The photos are beautiful and refreshing. I love these little cyclamens !
Thank you, Fred. And yet I envy you the warmth. Like you though, we are very short on rain. We need a downpour and haven’t had a good one for many months. It’s amazing how resilient plants are, isn’t it. Tough conditions and yet they thrive. Nature’s astonishing!
Spring is on the way! Lovely to see.
It is! And . I’m excited despite that I love the sharpness and thrilling cool of winter.
Love all your black and white planting!
Hi Jude. Originally I always planned to have a white garden but then I saw that Rosemary Verey had suggested a black and white variation with tulips in Elton John’s white garden and I loved it. So I try to find plants in shades of black, silver and grey. Quite a lot of variegated foliage as well. Perversely I love orange but have none and don’t tell anyone, but I planted a little tub of Virichic tulips (Schiaparelli pink and green) because I loved the picture in the catalogue! 😉
Please forgive my pedantry but your Magnolia looks more like M. doltsopa, until recently Michelia doltsopa, in my book a much more interesting plant than M. grandiflora. It’ll give you massed flowers rather than the well spaced blooms of M. grandiflora, a big one in full flower is a wonder to behold. The stately arching fronds of my Solomon’s Seal have been skeletonised by sawfly caterpillars, do you get that over there? Doesn’t sound like it.
Jim, no pedantry, all knowledge and gratefully received by someone who doesn’t know from someone who knows. This is just another example of nurseries mislabelling plants and shrubs. I reckon two or three times a year I will buy things that either mislabelled or unlabelled. And don’t get me started on plastic overuse in the nursery industry. Anyway, thank you for the correction.
As to the Solomon’s Seal – touchwood no problems at all. But sawfly will demolish juvenile eucalypts in the blink of an eye which makes our reforestation of the farm a challenge. We hope to plant over 1000 trees in the next couple of years and it will be a frequent job to make sure the sawfly larvae are destroyed.
Looking not bad at all for the bleak midwinter!
I have to say, Mr.P that it surprises me for the time of year, and the fact that the mountain behind Hobart is currently covered in snow.
I have covered the garden in mushroom mulch and fed it quite well with seaweed fertiliser. Maybe that’s why. It isn’t getting much sun at this time of year with the townhouse overshadowing.
Lots of nice colour in your garden to see you through the winter months.
Thanks Paul. I do think that the lack of rain and the mild winter has kept colour in the garden. Climate change…