A well watered garden

In the previous blogs, I had mentioned the challenges we were facing with watering the plants daily. It requires too much effort to water individual pots, which is why most of our plants died. Sometime they received too much attention (water) and sometime too little. Plus, it made life difficult for us if we wanted to go on a holiday. While friends can turn on the tap, it's a big ask to get them to spend 30 mins watering each pot.

Anyway, with all that sorted, we let our small collection of plants flourish. I'll let the pictures do all the talking!

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Bougainviillea

Potato plants

Of course, where there is water, there are weeds. This plant came up in the Chikoo tree pot by itself. I'm letting it live as it has nice flowers and is a ground cover.

Common Purslane

We also bought some new plants, now that we can look after them. The yellow flowering plant is called Tecoma. It is shrub that produces trumpet shaped flowers. It grows in abundance in Ahmedabad, so should be alright throughout the year without demanding too much.

Tecoma

I also saw a Tibouchina. It was more expensive than the other plants, but I hope that it wll tie our two gardens together - Melbourne and Ahmedabad. It looks as lovely as ever, with purple flowers and hairy green leaves.

Tibouchina

Frost attack!

Melbourne is susceptible to frost during the winters. In the last 7 years, our garden has survived it well. Perhaps we did not have enough frost to cause much damage. This year, however, quite a few plants suffered damage.

Princess Lily bitten by the frost

The most disappointing one was guava. We had more fruits this year compared to last. Sadly, many of them were, literally, frozen in their tracks towards development! It’s not a pretty sight, but they deserve a mention on the blog. Other guavas will be ready in a month’s time for plucking.

Poor Guava

Blackened

Another victim of the frost is Tibouchina. The original Tibouchina is located under trees, so is not affected. The new ones are out in the open and quite tall. The frost took out most of the branches and the leaves started dropping at an alarming rate. I read on forums that the plant is not dead, but may need pruning of the dead branches once the risk of frost has passed.

Dead arm of Tibouchina

I am looking forward to spring soon and putting this winter behind us!

Tibouchina

In 2015, I had mentioned that I had used Tibouchina prunings to stake peas. By December that year, some of them had struck and were showing leaf buds.

This summer, they really blossomed and created a spectacular effect! They grew tall so fast and have created a lovely screen to block off the neighbour's window across the street.

Nearly 6 ft tall

Tibouchina in bloom

Tibouchina

Summer progress

We are well and truly into summer now. All the plants suddenly start growing at a ferocious pace!

The vegetable patch is not much to talk about. The Lettuce saplings have started to give us leaves. I hope to harvest many before it becomes too hot.

Lettuce

I mentioned in a previous post about using Tibouchina pruning as stakes for Peas. The Peas did not survive, but just look at how well the Tibouchina has settled in! Their flowers will look lovely in the vegetable patch.

Tibouchina

I caught a glimpse of a Broccoli on one day. The next morning the plant was destroyed.

Broccoli

The Virginian stock are looking lovely! I now know what a field of flowers looks like. I see lots of bees hovering, so hopefully that is great news for the fruit flowers.

Virginian Stock

Speaking of which, the Pomegranate had a million flowers this spring. Some even dropped their petals and went on to pretend that they would become fruits. But, day by day, I see them falling. We will be lucky to get even one this season.

Pomegranate

However, the Guava is showing potential with eight buds. The tree is still quite short, only 4 feet tall. Fingers crossed!

Guava

Last year, the Kalanchoe flowered quite beautifully. This year too, the flame red flowers look so fantastic!

Kalanchoe

A few plants to look forward to are the herbs in the vertical planter. The Basil is well settled now and the leaves should be ready to be plucked soon. We have already started to harvest the Chives, Rosemary and Mint.

Basil

Chives

Lastly, I am so excited with the flower developing on the Cactus!

Cactus

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

Summer notes

Sadly, this was not to be a hot summer. We have had cool days, followed by really cold ones. Where is the summer, I ask you?

Setting all that aside, the plants are still providing cheer by flowering. The prettiest flowers are from the Kangaroo Paw. They literally look like pink kangaroo paws that open up to reveal a yellow interior. This is what attracts the birds (or so I read, cannot verify as all birds are driven away by the two doggies)

Kangaroo Paw

We have a native ground cover on the edges of the beds. Since our beds are raised, they form very pretty evergreen cascades. They have tiny star shaped flowers in the spring and summer. We have two colours of the ground cover - bright green and mauve. The flowers are white and in abundance in summer, which attract a lot of bees.

Myoporum Parvifolium

Myoporum Parvifolium

Our other flowers were also doing well. The Tibouchina flowers literally throughout the year, except from January to April. They are a bright purple coloured flower with delicate petals. These fall off after three days, but the tree has enough to keep the cheer alive.

Tibouchina

The African daisies also love the sun and keep flowering. This time I decided to prune the plant a bit as it was taking over everything around it. The plant sent out shoots really quickly and did not sulk at all :) From the cast-offs, I made a bouquet for the house. The flowers last us for over a week.

Purple African daisy

Out of the two Dahlias that we had bought a couple of months ago, the yellow one decided to first settle in and then produce flowers. Whereas, the red one continued flowering and only grew more leaves after it stopped. The flowers are really very good looking.

Dahlia

And finally, the Virginian stock was nicely flowering as well. They are really small and could have benefited with some more seeds in each pot. I have seeds left over for the next season.

Virginian stock

After writing this entry, I realised that most of the flowers that do flower for long in our garden are purple in colour! The Lupins and Hebe flowers are also purple! While I do have orange and pink versions of the African diasies, they do not do as well as the deeper purple. The winter bulbs and dahlias are different colours but last only for a short time. Hence, the next time I plan a garden with permanent features, I will pick more colours.

Too much purple!

Garden retreat

The disadvantage of our plot location is that we are lower than our neighbours, which makes our garden very visible. There are naturally several trees that grow fast enough to be used for screening, but they are very common. We wanted to have variety as well as functionality. At the start of the new season, we had grand plans for spending more time outdoors in our garden.

By now Morrison nursery and BAAG had become our favorite haunts for uncommon plants. An episode of Better Homes and Gardens introduced us to a plant called Tibouchina, which is an evergreen shrub with beautiful flowers all year round. We got two of those to brighten up our garden.

Tibouchina

Our next purchase was a more functional one. We wanted a fast growing tree to block out the view from our neighbour's newly built deck! The best option was an Australian native called Hakea Salicifolia. It is an evergreen tree and really bushy.

Hakea Salicifolia

And finally, Anshuman wanted a maple because of it's beautiful leaves and bark. Maples are deciduous, so we had to pick a location where the view to our garden was not so direct. But the tree was just beautiful and worth it!

Maple

I did say finally, but on the way to the cashier our eye was caught by another tree called Crepe Myrtle. These are also deciduous but have beautiful paper-y flowers for a short time in spring. We picked up one from the Indian summer collection.

Crepe Myrtle