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.