Bringing in some permanents

As we get better at looking after our plants (and not killing them within 3 days of bringing them home), we bought some plants that are evergreen. Since the wicking bed was empty (yet again), we got plants suitable for that. This time, we tried yet another new nursery called Anand nursery in Gandhinagar. It was the best! Great collection, helpful staff and a complete solution in terms of plants, pots, stones, gardening equipment and fertiliser.

Summer plants and others

A summer collection is incomplete without a Hibiscus. These flowers are bold and the leaves are even bigger! They come in very nice colours, red being the most common. But we decided to go for a yellow one with a red centre.

Hibiscus

To tie our Ahmedabad garden back to our Melbourne one, we included a Kalanchoe in this collection. They are very popular here actually and they come in many different colours. I don't remember seeing so many colours in Melbourne, nor do I remember them flowering so profusely.

Kalanchoe

Another plant common to our Melbourne garden is the Carnation. These Carnations are not as large as the ones we had in Melbourne, but they have more character to them because of the double colour.  They look very dainty.

Carnation

Here's an interesting plant we picked up. It's a Jade plant (Portulacaria Afra Variegata), but double coloured too!

Jade plant

This plant is not much to look at in the picture, but it's dark coloured leaves are lovely. The lady at the nursery said that it flowers too. The pot had two of them, so we put one at both ends.

Alternanthera

And finally, we bought another marigold. This is our second, let's hope it lasts!

Yellow Marigold

We also bought a tree. It's called Tabebuia. It's growing near the society's swimming pool also, but that one has pink flowers. Ours has a white flower with a yellow centre. It's quite leafy and is filling up the balcony space well.

Tabebuia

White flower Tabebuia

We also bought a type of Kamini Jasmine for our terrace. It will be placed just outside our window, so that the fragrance comes in through the window. It has very tiny flowers and quite a subtle orangey smell! I guess when it's covered with flowers, the smell will be more obvious.

Kamini Jasmine

Jasmine flower

We also got a free Mogra Jasmine when I ordered plants from there. This one is not as bushy as the Kamini Jasmine, but flowers are bigger and more aromatic. It struggled a bit in the heat to start with, but picked up with regular watering. I have attached a jute thread to the railing for this one to climb on.

Mogra Jasmine

Pursuit of a red flower

I can rarely walk out of a bookstore or a plant nursery empty handed!

We wanted to renew the mulch in our garden before the weeds started to spread during spring and summer. It was a simple task, should have taken us 10 mins. But when we got there, I had a wishlist ready which consisted of buying a red flower. It was recently I realised that all the flowers in our garden are white, yellow, pink or purple. The Kalanchoe is red but flowers for a very short time.

Little did we know that finding a striking red flower can be so difficult! We wanted a perennial, bold and large red flower. Bottle brush and Azaleas were out due to personal reference. Everything else was an annual. We did like the summer bulbs of Gladioli and Lily, but those are short lived. Hence, we were walking out dejectedly after picking up the bulbs.

At the checkout of Masters, they had a collection of natives. Through the closely placed plants, Anshuman spotted a Waratah. It is an Australian native and the state emblem of NSW. It has a large showy flower, bright red in colour. Hence, we ended up buying it, along with Lily and Gladioli.

You would think that at least one of those would deliver. But noooooo. Here is the sad tale of the red flower.

Lily: This is what it looked like in November. It took a month or so to get to this point. We were soon going on a holiday for 3 weeks, so hoped that it would flower AFTER that. But one cannot control nature - it flowered behind our backs and didnt even have a fallen petal to show for it!

Lily

Gladioli: Did not flower, only sprouted some nice leaves and that's it.

Gladioli

Waratah: Flowered and looked good doing it. Sadly, we did not take a single photo! And now the plant is dead. Yes, the plant that can survive a bush fire did not survive our garden. How depressing is that! Anyway, here is an image from the web to show what potential it had.

By Casliber (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

So, in the end we were left with our trusty Carnation to save the day. They flowered in all shades of red.

Carnation

Summer round up - 2

Princess lilies – For my birthday this year, Anshuman gifted me a new plant called Princess Lily. It has nice white flowers, with slight pink and cream streaks though it. Even the leaves are lovely, with a nice white border. Once the flowers die down in autumn, the plant still looks striking. It needs a partly shady spot, so I put it under the Hakea.

Princess Lillies

Cactus - Last post I was looking forward to a cactus flower. It did have several flowers, surprisingly very dainty for such a prickly plant! Only the purple cactus flowered. The red and yellow had no change from the last year. In fact the stem of the yellow one seems to be rotting, even though I never water it.

Cactus flower

Crepe Myrtle – This is one of my absolute favourites! I envy the people who have this growing in their yards. When full grown, the tree is 8 ft tall or so. The branches are quite linear, fanning out from the trunk. This gives a spectacularly organised effect when they have flowers growing at the end. So far, I have seen various shades of pink, light purple and white. They only flower for a month in February-March, so they are much looked forward to.

Crepe Myrtle

Carnation – These are still happily flowering away. Since the seeds were mixed colours, we have had white, light pink, dark pink, red and recently a dark purple Carnation. Strangely enough, they smell like cloves. I googled and turns out that the variety I have is called “clove pinks”, because of the smell.

Cascading colourful Carnations

Calendula – Until I grew this, I had no idea what a joy it is to see an orange flower. Maybe because that is my favourite colour! I had grown a couple of them in a pot, which took more than a year to flower and died after 2 pale yellow flowers. Since we did not have any vegetables in the patch this year, I sowed several seeds of Calendula. They struggled with some pests for a bit, but really shot to glory from January! Each flower lasts for roughly a week and attracts butterflies and bees.

Calendula

Winter is around the corner. While this forces us indoor, we have the lovely Daphne to look forward to.

Spring notes

The biggest news this spring is a lone lime in our 4-year old tree! Every year we get excited when we see the white flowers on the plant. Every year we watch in despair as they drop to the ground one-by-one. This repeats the next season. Until now, one lime, which we almost missed behind all the leaves!

Lime

In other news, Carnation was still happily flowering away. They are my favourite flowers! I planted the seeds in a pot, so they are a bit leggy trying to find the sun. But the flowers still looked pretty, even when not upright.

Carnation

Daisies are the really looked-forward to flowers. They turn up almost overnight and are such followers of the sun! We have them in three colours, so its hard to decide which colour is the best.

Orange daisies

Purple daisies

Pink daisies

Other flowers at this time are the Magnolia and the Eternal Fragrance Daphne. The Magnolia has such a strong perfume that even our next neighbour can smell it in her house! The flowering season does not last too long, only 2-3 weeks. The flowers itself are pretty delicate and the petals fall off with the wind.

Magnolia

The Eternal Fragrance Daphne lives up to its name. The first flowers bloom at this time of the year for about 3 weeks. Once they die down, the plant gives out new leaves and extends its scope. The next set of flowers will bloom in November, just in time for outdoor sitting season.

Eternal Fragrance Daphne

A little overshadowed by its neighbours, the Cherry Leaf Lilly Pilly gives out new leaves at this time. The leaves are a dark red in colour, giving the tree (or bush?) its name. The Lilly Pilly is quite small, only about 3 feet high compared to the other one that we have.

Cherry Leaf Lilly Pilly

The Hakea is quite tall now and successfully blocking our neighbour's from viewing our kitchen! In the spring, there are tiny feathery flowers all along the stem. In the tall tree, they look quite spectacular.

Hakea

And finally, a previously unknown succulent is standing quite tall! This was given to us by my parents when they visited us in April 2012. It came in two little tea cup sized terracotta pots. In the pots it got water sparingly. When we setup our succulent bed, we planted some cuttings. There it got water 2-4 times a week. Judging by the height, it obviously does well with water!

Update Jul 2016: This is Variegated Crassula sarmentosa

Variegated Crassula sarmentosa

P.S. The Jasmine is starting to make an appearance with some flowers. More later!

Jasmine

Back from a break

Every year, I take a break from gardening during the winter months. The shorter days mean that I leave for work in darkness and come back by darkness. The only time I get to see the garden is from the window on the weekends. I am glad now that our garden is mature and is geeen all year round.

Come August and the plants start to get restless. The oranges are already starting to change to the right colour and the Daphne is flowering.

Daphne

Orange

The Jonquils are the first of the bulbs to flower. I can see them from the kitchen window, it's such a lovely sight.

Jonquil

Last September, I planted Carnations. They are pretty slow to grow, but finally a  bud appeared in July, followed by another soon after. They are such delicate flowers!

Carnation

Carnation

The vegetables I planted in March are doing ok without any love from me! The kale and spinach have been giving enough leaves every week for me to use them in our salad.

Kale

Spinach

The garlic is also growing well but still a long way away from harvest. There are a couple of flowers on the pea plant but the plant is starting to dry out from the base up. Unfortunately my veggie patch was infested with aphids while I was on holiday. I came back too late to save most of the peas.

Garlic

Pea flowers

And finally, nothing cheers me up more than the promise of new flowers and leaves! The pomegranate is my favorite in this respect. As the tree has matured, the leaves have started to arrive earlier in the month. The jasmine is also showing new buds.

Pomegranate

Jasmine

The surprising new entry is this cutting from Tibouchina. I pruned the plants in autumn as they were getting too leggy and used the cuttings to provide support to the peas. Now it looks like one of them has set root! This will be fun to watch.

Tibouchina stakes