This Year's Garden

Now I have my new card reader up and working, and it's stopped raining and blowing for a minute, I can post some photos from yesterday........

Lush green of new growth, and a grouping of blues and purples. Huge Blue Pacific (the bees love it!) at top, white potato creeper at back, new maple leaves, a snippet of my second year almond tree at left, honeysuckle (not flowering), and I can't remember the two flowering purples(?).

My mum used to know the names of everything, but I don't.

Steps leading up from my studio to the house. I would love to surface them with slate, and have collected some, but not done yet. The sides are treated pine at top and two strings of wire below, with variegated ivy twisted round. The left side has about two year's growth, but is nearly there. It needs heaps of trimming, and ivy's so over enthusiastic, but it softens hard lines so well.

Last year's petunia I cut back, along with a new climbing white iceberg rose planted last year to trail up the front of the studio.

Don't you love forget me nots? I pulled them all out for years, now I let them run. So pretty for spring. I even found a pink abberation yesterday! The head was given to me by a friend who got it at a sale. I haven't found a safe place for it yet. You can see a piece of ear at right (must glue that back......).

A view from front path of my studio, those steps (see photo above) in the middle. Huge cream prostrate grevillea which holds the banks together, shields the naughty bunnies, and feeds the bees big time. I have another next to it and planted a third three months ago. The bank is so steep, all mulch and topsoil wanders down after a time, so anything that covers it and looks good is great. Lots of soft ferny leaves when it's not flowering, which just drapes down the hill. The reddish bush at left is a naturally seeded native that I left there and have trained it into a rounded shape. This year it has flowered for the first time with tiny cream flowers. New growth is a lovely russet and it clips back really well. See another upright grevillea bush in front of the blue pacific up the top.... 'Moonlight'. It has soft leaves and six inch creamy sculpted flowers. There are so many beautiful grevilleas: I have about eight.

Hidden behind that bush, along my studio walkway, is a long run of flowering arum lilies, a budding second season purple rhododendron, verbena, irises not yet flowering and a white hydrangea, which gets burnt each summer. I often think I should move that, but the maple is growing bigger, and should shelter it soon.

One of my absolute favorites, the glorious Candytuft! A dear little perennial, sort of, this one doesn't seem to die back. The most brilliant snowy white flowers, and seeds enthusiastically all summer so you can collect them and start some new ones. This plant is about four years old and has a collection of little babies around it. Breaking my wrist has slowed me down, but I am going to pick them all up and plant them in a border round some roses.

"In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.
My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.
The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful."
... Abram L. Urban