What's Blooming This Week?

In The Espaliery the Japanese plum trees are now laden with blossom and filled with bees.

This is all very pretty but the reality is that there is too much blossom.  We will need to do massive thinning as the fruit develops to avoid problems.  Small, poor tasting fruit would result if the tree attempted to mature this large a crop.  In addition, excess fruit falling on the ground will become a source of fruit fly infestation.

A longer term solution would be changing our pruning protocols to leave fewer fruiting spurs.

The Future of The Garden Room.

We used a photograph of last night's bonfire to create a Photoshop mockup of the design for the wall of  "The Garden Room".  Although we are loving this unroofed space in its current form the idea of one day creating a huge kitchen and living room is also attractive.  And anyway it is fun playing around with design ideas.

This wall faces north-west so the single most important factor affecting the design is the need to screen the hot afternoon sun in summer whilst allowing it to penetrate in winter.  Our current thinking is that the small square windows high in the wall allow easy shuttering when needed, while the three narrow slots only allow sun to penetrate in winter and the large door opening out to the pond and fountain in The Octagon will be shielded with a brise soleil.  

A totally different, hi-tech solution could involve the use of double-glazed smart glass in the construction of this wall.  Innovative suggestions would be very useful at this stage as we are in no rush and time spent on developing the final design could lead to an awesome outcome.

The End of Winter.

A big "Thank You" goes to Peter Marshall, Jay Fraser, Helena Stein, Martin Rule, Nicholas Vale and Garry Jarrett for helping collect lots of scrap timber to build a bonfire and then joining us for a meal.  The warmth from fire was amazing and the house looked quite spectacular in the firelight.


Each year for the past few years we have had a huge bonfire in the large pit in the centre of The Main Courtyard.  It was a delightful way to mark the end of winter.

This could be the last of these bonfire nights as we are thinking of starting work on  the transformation of the pit into a circular pond, surrounded by a raised Octagon, which will become the central feature of the The Main Courtyard.  For more on The Octagon click here.

Self Seeding Poppies

 

One of the features of The Old Cottage Garden in Spring is the spectacular display of poppies.  

These self seeded annuals reappear year after year and as time goes by we are developing our own unique colour strains.  The original red "Gallipoli" poppies and a number of heirloom varieties, in tones orange, white and purple, purchased years ago from from The Diggers Club are now cross-pollinating and each season brings new delights and surprises.

At this time of year weeding becomes a bit tricky as we carefully pick out the poppies from other self seeded "weeds".  Hopefully as time goes by we will have fewer undesirables in this garden.  For more on The Old Cottage Garden click here

The First Asparagus of the Season

The first asparagus shoots are emerging in The Espaliery telling us that  Spring is definitely on the way.

The asparagus bed is now four years old and we expect to be harvesting huge amounts from now on even though it is still  crucial that we leave one third of the crop from each crown unharvested to rebuild vigour for next year.  During this growing period the plants need generous watering so we will be re-setting the irrigation timers to achieve the moisture levels necessary to ensure fast growth and tender shoots. We never bother buying the rather sad looking bunches that are available year round from the big supermarkets, much preferring to eat asparagus only during its season of growth here in our own garden.

A generous feed with fresh compost at this time and at the end of the picking season will keep things moving along.  For more on The Espaliery click here

Red Swamp Banksia

The Red Swamp Banksia (Banksia occidentalis) or Waterbush is from a small area on the south coast of Western Australia.  We planted one in The Water Garden eighteen months ago, where we have planted dozens of  east coast banksias,  unsure if it would survive here. 

The Water Garden had been been inaccessible since the great floods of last year so this week it was a nice surprise to discover the Western Australian banksia had grown rapidly, surviving dought, wind, frost and flood,   was in full flower and already attracting the attention of honeyeaters.This is a tough little beauty, which is what we need in the difficult location where we are developing the Water Garden.

A field study in its native habitat showed that the Red Swamp Banksia is pollinated by the New Holland Honeyeater and the White Cheeked Honeyeater.  Both these species occur here and are increasingly frequent visitors to The Water Garden.  For more on The Water Garden click here

Notes from the Library #23

It takes a lot to lure me out of here these days.  More and more I agree with Cicero's dictum "If you have a garden and library you have everything you need".  And, increasingly now, the garden and the library at The Drip are sources of complete and utter satisfaction.  But the Mudgee Reader's Festival sounded like something I shouldn't miss, particularly as one of the speakers was the author of a book that clearly should be in our library.  So it was off to town for a very civilized day of socializing with people who read and people who write.

Derelie Cherry's "Two Dogs and A Garden" is a charming, lush and very personal account of her life in Paradise.  "Paradise" for Derelie is the garden her husband Bob has created 100 kms north of Sydney, a garden that Leo Schofield described as a "horticultural Valhalla."  Over a period of forty years Bob Cherry has built this remarkable garden, bred plants and developed one of Australia's most successful wholesale nurseries.  

Bob's passion for flowers has lead him to create an amazing array of new garden varieties, most notably the well-known and very widely distributed "Paradise" range of Sasanqua camellias.  We have never planted these here, but I suspect that after reading Derelie's book, and gaining an insight into the person behind the plants,  there might soon be some new additions to our camellia collection.  For more on The Camellia Grove click here