What have I been doing

Two years without a word on my beloved handkerchief-size garden! Nothing like procrastination to make the time fly by.

I may have been (as if there’s any doubt about it!) lazy when it comes to writing, but less so when it comes to gardening. I am proud to report that there is there is one major (major for me, that is) garden project undertaken (and completed too) during the past two years.

I have provided support for the three babies of my jasmine. One support is ready-made; the other is hand-made, by my own hands. I challenge anyone to guess which is which!

 

Now for the baby jasmine bushes to grow into the robust splendour, in the likeness of the parent plant… The images above are from February 2012, and I’m still waiting for that. But the young buds are already visible on all four of my jasmine plants, and come spring, my garden will be filled with the intoxicating fragrance.

Camellia in flower

I can't claim that I've had much luck with the single camellia plant in my garden. And no wonder. Judging by the information I read after acquiring the plant in my local nursery, camellias are a tad demanding. They are a slow grower, a host of pests love them, they need to be pruned a little after flowering. Not that I ever did that in the four years I had it - it seems so small anyway... Which might be why so many leaves of my camellia tend to turn yellow, causing me heart ache when I have to tear them off.

Then there is some delicate operation (called gibbing) that you are supposed to do to the buds if you suspect that they will not flower. I never did them, naturally, and witnessed a season or two without any of those beautiful, large blooms.

But this July my camellia did not disappoint me. It developed some lovely - alas, all to short lived! - flowers. What a sight in an otherwise rather drab winter garden!

  

The big picture

Gardens change constantly, mostly because the gardener cannot let it be. At least I can't. My garden went through many metamorphosis; some came about because new plants were introduced, some because old plants died, and some because I keep moving plants about. I am currently contemplating moving the golden-leafed bushes from the mid-section to one of the corners... In any case, this is how my 10 x 4 metres garden looks now (more or less - in this collage, most of the flowering plants are in bloom, which is not strictly true for this time of the year):

And here is the list of my plants, more or less as they appear in the image, clock-wise:

• Fern
• Ardisia crenata (In poor condition - I'll give it a couple of years.)
• Chicken and hen
• Cat’s tails (There are three of them! For a while, I was in love with this plan. Not so sure any more.)
  Philodendron
• Mint 
• Azalea (Two lovely azalea bushes, one dark pink and the other a lighter pink.)
• Day lily (The only plant still surviving from the original garden - not that there were many when I moved in some six or seven years ago.)
• Echeveria (Lovely little plants - I only wish birds would not peck at them, disfiguring their leaves.)
• Japanese maple (My pride and joy.)
• Geranium (One pink and two red - the latter are a beauty to behold when they flower - which happens rarely in my garden)
• Yesterday today and tomorrow (Three years on, and it is still a midget... Buy I am still hoping.) 
• Jasmine (An absolute beauty.)
• Camellia (Not all that robust in my garden - and very loath to flower. But when it does!...)
• Duranta sheena gold (Undemanding and refreshing to the eye.)
• Plumbago (Going strong, and I am constantly picking its sticky flowers out of my hair.)
• Strawberry (Love to munch them, if the birds do not get to them first.)
• Erigeron daisy (The closest I could find to camomile flowers.)
• Camomile (Not at all like wild growing camomile from my childhood - but the fragrance is still lovely.)
• Oleander (A baby oleander, really.)
• Salvia / sage (Beautiful flowers.)
• Rosemary (The parent plant did not survive, but four or five of its progeny are growing strong.)
• Lemon thyme (Looks nice, smells nice too.)
• Australian bush cherry (My attempt at topiary.)
• Ground covers: pratia, penny royal, Irish moss, peace in the house, and some others I cannot identify any loner (Constantly fighting each other for supremacy, with a little help from me. Currently, I am biased towards Irish moss and pratia, though trying to keep the latter out of the peace-in-the-house domain.)

Jasmin, spring 2010

Gasp! I just realised that I neglected to post the images of my beloved jasmin as it looked this spring, in September 2010. Alas, its flowering season is so short, but the memory lives on... Every morning when I woke up I used to bury my face into the delicate fragrant white flowers. Till next spring!

Plumbago, growing upwards

Unlike normal gardeners, I do not grow my plumbago as a bush or a hedge, but as a climber. I read somewhere that plumbago plant, if given a chance, will cling onto a tree and grow upwards. In fact, I have seen the blue plumbago flowers peering high up from among tree leaves while driving in Northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

And since I have a bare wall (lots of bare walls, actually) in my garden and since one of them features now unused hooks (they were positioned there to hold my old washing line, but that’s another story), I decided that the combination was ideal for making my newly acquired plumbalo plant go up.

When I brought it home from the nursery, my plumbago plant did not look very promising. I had done what I promised to myself I’ll never do again: I had bought an inferior specimen, simply because it was the only one available and I was too lazy to make a trip to another nursery.

But my scruffy plumbago lived up to its reputation of surviving almost anything and soon started sprouting new growth. As the branches extended, I tied them up and up, until they reached respectable height. I find that now, three or four years later, they look quite decorative against the West facing wall of my garden.

It is worth repeating that the chalky, white residue that can appear on older plumbago leaves is not a pestilence, but a natural feature of the plant. You may read more about that in this entry.

My plumbago then (about one year old)...

...and now:

On plumbago leaves and pointless death of a praying mantis

Well, thank you Doug Caldwell and University of Florida!

I have been agonising for months about the tiny white dots on the underside of many of the leaves of my plumbago. They have a raspy, almost sand-paper feel to them and are most unpleasant to touch. I was convinced they were the tiny eggs of some pest bug.

So I sprayed the plant with insecticide. One hapless praying mantis died, despite my efforts to resuscitate it by taking it away from the sprayed area and by giving it a quick bath in clean water. Alas, nothing helped. Normally, I would never kill a praying mantis, because it devours “bad” insects in the garden. If a praying mantis gets lost and wanders into my house, I scoop it carefully with a tea towel and take it outside.

The dots remained on the plumbago leaves. Most annoyingly, every single resource dealing with “pests” and “plumbago” on the internet assured me that this is a hardy, pest-free plant. Even if some caterpillar or a few aphids munch on plumbago leaves, says the internet, they do not cause big damage to the plant.

And then, when I almost gave up hope – bingo! I stumbled upon this article. In the article Doug Caldwell talks about a new danger for otherwise pest-resistant plumbago in Florida in the guise of some beastly insect called chili thrips. More importantly for me in Johannesburg, South Africa, he also mentions this:

“A feature that sometimes confuses even the experts trying to diagnose declining plumbago hedges, is the whitish undersides of the leaves. This white material resembles a powdery mildew disease or a chemical spray deposit, it is neither. This white deposit is the natural exudate from “chalk” glands that are found on the plumbago species.”

There is also a picture of the underside of a plumbago leaf covered with the chalky dots – and yes, it looks exactly like my “affected” plumbago leaves!

Here is the image, so that none mistakes the whitish dots for pests, sprays the plant with insecticide and murders another innocent praying mantis:

These intruders are welcome

Not all the intruders are as unwelcome in my garden as the over-fertile tree. Over the years several plants have appeared from nowhere. Some of them are still growing strong.

There is the arum lily – or some variety of arum lily. It has not grown as big as the pedigreed arum lilies, not does it flower as often, but it is still welcome in my garden. I like its large (all right, largish) leaves and I adore its while funnel-like flowers that have all too short lifespan. Alas, my arum lily did not flower last year, but I am not giving up hope.

Then there is something that looks and tastes like strawberry (yes, I have bravely tasted it), so it must be a strawberry plant. I don't know where it came from. One day, it was simply there. I suspect that it made its way from the next door neighbour’s garden. Perhaps a bird plucked the berry, then dropped it in my garden and did not dare to come and fetch it because the neighbour’s cat was prowling around (as it usually does). Delicious fruit aside, the plant nicely refreshes an otherwise dull corner.

The third intruder is not really an intruder at all. I introduced the small violets several years ago, then forgot all about them until they started sprouting here and there. True, they make a statement only when planted en masse, but I think that my lone mini violets still look rather cheerful and I get annoyed with myself every time I mistake them for weeds and pluck them out (which happens often before they open their characteristic flowers). 

Another introduced intruder is a ground cover with round leaves. It was originally intended to occupy a sizeable portion of space. Since it was too quick to spread without the benefit of looking particularly pretty, I pulled out as much of it as I could and transplanted it into a corner where I hoped it would not bother anyone. While it looks much better in the new position, it still spreads too quickly and has to be checked in order not to devour the pebbles.