One of the great things about gardening in Sydney is that winter is still a time for growing things, planting and enjoying a few pretty blooms that like to flower in the cooler months. None of that cliched bleak snowy winter malarky down here!
Then again, we still do get the best of both worlds, in that there's a genuine burst of energy that accompanies the longer sunshine hours and warming temperatures of spring. So here's just a small selection of what's blooming here right now.
I can't show you all of them because I have postings lined up for later in the week about Pammy's plants, some of which are flowering now. And there's also a posting on the plants belonging to Pam's lovely old mum, and they're flowering too.
Our Australian native Dendrobium orchids are flowering their heads off this spring, and it's with a real sense of relief that I say that — because they didn't flower at all last year, and that was because an awful orchid beetle was chomping everything it could find. Such rotten timing, too, you rotten little orchid chomper!
The rotten part about the orchid beetles is that when I looked up in my garden pest reference book, it seemed there was little I could do, especially if I'm dedicated to organic methods. Bugger! So this year as the flower buds swelled I was out there, not sure what I was looking for, but I was out there anyway! Maybe I scared them off? One of the side effects of this lockdown season is a lack of haircuts and beard trims from my barber, so maybe I was just so scary looking that the beetles snuck away?
There was no need to worry about chomping beetles tucking into our Pieris japonica blooms.
This little potted plant is a fighter. It does best in cooler zones (my friends Eric and Jane up in the cool Blue Mountains west of Sydney have glorious big Pieris hedges.) But down here on the humid coast the Pieris struggles through our summers. I have it growing in a pot so I can move it from here to there as the seasons change. Right now it's getting all the morning sun it wants. Later on, I'll give it more shade as summer's intensity ramps up.
Look carefully at this photo of one of our hellebores. Yes, it's a bit blurry, so I was about to go outside and take a better one, but then I noticed sitting on top of the big green leaf was the hellebore plant's resident spider, the concierge, wanting to know what the hell I was doing. I'd been there for more than an hour weeding and mulching, and he had just about had enough of me. So, I decided that he was perfectly entitled to photo-bomb me!
Here's the fruits of a rare venture in online plant shopping: baby hellebores looking quite healthy and happy but no flowers yet. Maybe next year, but nice to know the kids are all right.
Finally, two plants which have admittedly been flowering all through winter and are still looking fabulous in spring. Now I am not certain exactly what type of bromeliad it is. Its botanical name is Aechmea fasciata, and it came to me via a lovely neighbor who was moving house. He came across to my place several years ago, told me he and his husband were downsizing and so they couldn't take all their plants with them. Would I like this one? I've never repotted it, fed it, cared for it or anything. As it's next door to my potted lime tree which I water often, the bromeliad does get watered often, and it loves life. I think it actually started flowering last autumn ... but time is getting very blurry around here. It just goes on and on and on ...
What a modest claim to fame: "Plant of the Century". That's what the label says (see below). It's a real geranium (ie not a pelargonium) and its name is 'Rozanne', voted Plant of the Century by some mob called the Royal Horticultural Society. It certainly loves to flower, and it's been flowering ever since I bought it at our local garden center at the beginning of winter. And it doesn't look like stopping any time soon.
There you go, a plant label that catches the eye with sheer modesty
And if you can read the back of the label it says the plant should grow to 50cm high (20 inches) and 60cm wide (two feet). Pam asked me this morning "Is it a groundcover?" because it's still hugging the ground while slowly spreading out in all directions. I await its decision to suddenly shoot up to that lofty 50cm size, but this certainly is the most delightful flowering plant I have met in ages. The deliciously pretty flowers just keep on coming, and coming and coming. If you see one in a garden store, buy it! I should have bought two ...
So there you go, folks, our springtime show and tell. It's all happening here right now, beautiful weather this Sunday to be out there in the garden, even if all you're doing is reading a book, snoozing or maybe just thinking "I guess I could do a bit of gardening sometime soon."