Then and now: the flower beds

I don't have any pictures of how the garden used to look like before I started meddling with it four or five years ago. In that time, the small patch of land that I call my own went through several transformations.

This is how the right hand side with the long row of agapanthus plants used to look like back in 2006:This is the same area today:


Yes, all the agapanthus is gone, disposed off, thrown away. I do not regret doing away with it, for it did not suit the character of the garden I was designing. As a rule, however, it is better to leave a specimen or two of the plant you fall out of love with, just in case.

Moving toward the centre, this is the 2006 view:

It features the newly-planted jasmine and pink azalea. Smack in the middle is my biggest gardening failure to date: the unfortunate gardenia. The first and second year it was so-so, even bearing several short-lived blooms. Then disaster set in. The leaves went yellow. They fell off. The next spring they reappeared - only for the same vicious cycle to be repeated.

I was desperate. I borrowed from the local library books that had something about gardenias in them. I searched the internet. I implemented every advice I could find. More watering. Less watering. Specific feeds. Iron. Magnesium. I even - yes, several people on gardenia forums said it worked for them - scattered polenta (bought specifically for the purpose) around my gardenia. Nothing helped. In the end I threw in my towel and cut the gardenia down.

That area now presents this view (except for the two yellow daisies plants in the foreground, which have been displaced three days after being planted):

For a long time, the gardenia spot was left empty; only last year I planted there bushes with bright green to golden yellow leaves, called Duranta "Sheena's Gold". To the right of jasmine and behind pink azalea is camellia - more about it anon, for I never get tired of photographing its beautiful flowers.

This was the sight that I used to see when I looked to the left as I entered the back yard from the living room:

While today I am greeted with this sight:

That's what I call my "green corner", because it is made up entirely of foliage plants: fern and cat's tails in the background, chicken-and-hens in the foreground, and behind them barely visible little bush which bears red berries and which refuses to grow bigger (as promised).

Do notice the stone work that has replaced the bare ground.

And what about the hydrangea bush that is there no more? Yes, I do regret having disposed of it. But that beauty was insatiable as far as watering is concerned. I could not keep up with its demands. The beautiful flowers it bore once a year were too short-lived to make the toil worth while. Still, I do miss it. Here is the gone hydrangea again, in all its glory, as it used to be:

In case you wondered what happened to the big leaved but scrawny plant from the 2006 photo, it is still there, but moved to the left, and it is much bigger now. More about it in the next instalment.