Moonlight Garden

 

Ambivalence is my middle name.

Only 6 weeks ago I was calling for more deep yellow roses (and wondering why my (usually) glorious gold `Graham Thomas' (see post 2/12/16) and more recently planted `Golden Celebration' are so shy this year) but now I'm thrilled with my garden of moonlight and lemon colours just outside my big window (and its occasional blue flowers too). Moreover, seriously, every 5 minutes, there's a visiting honeyeater, landing on soft yellow Phygelius capensis (below), supping the nectar, so the plant waves about like a crazy clowning acrobat...and draws the eye to the neighbouring moonlit roses, primrose yarrow (Achillea), apple-white Hydrangea quercifolia `Snowflake', and sublime lemon lilies (descendants of the Golden-Ray Lilies of Japan (Lilium auratum, above), with fragrance redolent of cloying lipstick oils, alas).

Some of the lilies are the perfect height - about 1.2m - but others are twice their advertised heighted (which annoys me intensely - I'm creating a picture here!) and, rather than have odd triffids here and there standing high above the mixed border, have been picked for a vase.

The anthers need plucking from lilies in a bouquet, of course, to avoid staining clothes and furniture. Recently I was stunned to learn that one of the chores of the many gardeners  employed by a British estate pre-WW1 was to remove anthers of Lilium - in situ. Good Lord! (So that's why they needed hundreds of lowly paid staff!) And yet...the deep russet-brown of the anthers match perfectly a garden ornament I have here, a large rusty treble clef. I like that. Otherwise, the colouring sounds very cool, and maybe too gentle, but as always there's lashings of green (too many flowers induce nausea).

There's jade leaves and apple; booms of chartreuse, moonlight, lemon, soft amber, palest topaz (`Crocus Rose', below), and butter-yellow. Summer has just arrived (after that longest-ever spring) and with the warmth I like the cool colour tones and narrow band of colour.

Très Chic.

And by chance!

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

What a Difference a Year Makes

Madeira Germander (Teucrium betonicum) is one of those big, in-your-face perennials, tough and flowering now even when it should be broiling. I like the pink-purple blooms and I use the sub-shrub - a couple of plants of it - to divide my blue and yellow garden (the end with loads of blue and a few blue-purple perennials) from my silver and raspberry-colour bed. Not long ago I snapped it with Penstemon `Alice Hindley' (with white Orlaya grandiflora (last picture) at the front). A year ago I disliked having the Teucrium next to the white throated, mauve penstemon; they seemed just too close in colour and the effect was wishy washy - and I never got around to changing my plant selection. But what  a difference a year makes! Instead of 2 spikes, the penstemon has many; and maybe that lace-cap annual (which I first saw in The White Garden at Sissinghirst Castle - is that why I love it? It self-sows gently, by the way) at the front helps, too. Suddenly it works; perhaps the dark green shrubs behind are creating a good foil, also.

What I need now are a couple of cranesbills (true Geranium like Geranium pratense striatum, above) with silver foliage to plant at the base; evergreen species with blue flowers please. (OK, purple. I know when I am being totally unreasonable.) Now to search my books (real books!), on-line perennial catalogues and my well-thumbed (paper) seed catalogues...

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

Summer Solstice

It's the Summer Solstice - the longest day (and arguably the start of summer, but us Australians deem the first of December have this honour - when it's usually been hot and dry, already, for weeks. Usually, now, it's the end of the second half of spring, the hot half, full of perennials and roses, coming to a hot roasting end; so different to the first half of spring when vernal bulbs appear in the cold early months of August and September when winter starts to tentatively shrug off it coat.)

But this year has been very different; this long, glorious spring seems never-ending. Mostly cool weather, loads of rain, masses of flowers, countryside still, remarkably green, and, perhaps best of all, no bushfire danger as yet in my home in the hills (on those dragon-breath days that make us flee to the city - just in case). And as I look at some old photos I remember Cup weekend at the start of November, with the sheets of wildflowers (pink chocolate lilies, bright gold bulbine lilies; and white milkmaids (pictured) nearer home) north of the great divide. Incredible!

We've now had 2 years and 2 months of (mostly) wallaby-nibbling-free garden growing time (but who's counting?)  so I'm pretty darn pleased with my garden within its wallaby-proof fence.

Roses (those prickly customers I introduced into the garden after 20 years - hey, they're colourful), perennials, shrubs, wildflowers, clematis (left) (Clematis in December! - lots of them!); it's all giving me a joy that's new to me and I can't wipe the smile off my face. Flowers may be looked down upon, a bit, but there's a lot to be said for both plants that change with the seasons, and ephemeral effects; and flowers tick both boxes. As long as there's lashings of green, to boot, to remind you that you are in a garden...(I can't handle those `Gardens of the Year' with wall to wall flowers like spilt paint boxes or badly painted children's pictures, all colour, garish, with not a leaf in sight; is it a garden or a display of how to torture annual plants?).

Christmas may knock off the cool weather. How can the summer holidays be other than scorching, sun-burning, blistering, gasping, withering? Then the spring flowers, extended so wonderfully, will come to an end. I wonder how many summer-blooming perennials and other plants I have to give the garden a bit of interest - Dahlias (below)? Agastache? Hydrangeas (mainly oak-leaf)? And tiny Cyclamen purpurescens (a tiny garnish, as it were, for decorating by the front door).

Is it time to toss more salvias in everywhere for the hot months?

Maybe.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

More Yellow Roses Please!

I need more yellow roses.

Now this is something that, I'm pretty sure, J would disagree with.

Before about 2005 our plot of plants (the garden that I like to call `Possum Creek') was free of roses - plants which J had convinced me had loads of giant thorns and no redeeming features. But then my friends introduced me to the luscious blooms bred by David Austin and it's hard to say whether I prefer the old-style look of a bloom punch-drunk pack-full of soft petals - or the various perfumes and fragrances and scents from harem-enticer (pale apricot `Jude the Obscure' near the front gate) to tea-rose fragrance (soft yellow `Teasing Georgia') to a strongly perfumed `old rose fragrance with hints of honey and almond blossom' (white `Winchester Cathedral').

There's pink roses around the circular lawn (burgundy, with deep pink ones each side, then soft pink, then white); pink and white perfumed roses near the wooden garden seat; and by the carport (a cedar wall), where there's a hedge of Mexican orange blossom (good old Choisya, a great plant, I love it) I have some yellow roses that I admire from my living room (through a large window): golden `Graham Thomas' (above) in the centre flanked by `Comtes de Champagne' and ever paler blooms as the eye travels outwards. Not quite enough yellow last year, so 2 plants of tall `Golden Celebration' were tucked behind GT; and I admit it's too early, really, to see the benefit. But. But.

This year Gorgeous golden `Graham Thomas' seems to be completely swallowed up by the paler blooms - `Comtes de Champagne', `Crocus Rose'; lovely creatures, but not the foil against the many clumps of deep blue Siberian iris we had flowering madly this time last year. Don't get me wrong, I love the pale roses, and they'd be great against a hedge of darkest green, say, some of the Osmanthus tribe, but here they're a bit insipid and a waste of iris-contrast-opportunity. So we need gold roses towards the centre, and they need to be a little shorter than `Comtes de Champagne' so that we see all the lovely flowers...something golden-yellow and 90cm high please.

With sensational scent.

Is that too much to ask?

(No. Two seconds on Mr Google and we have Rosa `Molineux', a small shrub with rich yellow flowers that have, it says, medium intensity of musky tea scent...which sounds delicious.  Available in Australia? - yes. Perfect!)

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

Wild Blue Sun Orchids in Spring

One of those many, many reasons that I love living in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne is the countless spring wildflowers, and the blue sun orchids are maybe the pinnacle (along with other wild things like our rather-too-friendly marsupials). Thelymitra ixioides is also known as Spotted Sun Orchid and it makes me smile for another reason...when it actually opens, that is, and pollinates with other flowers in the species, when it's very sunny (otherwise it self-pollinates).

I smile because it grows on my bushland property (High 5!) and was identified by my botanist mother when we bought our patch of paradise 20 odd years ago...and she said (with some sort of pride, I think), that we had the rare unspotted form (High 5! I guess).  But J and I don't want to seem to boast, especially about this, and (until now!) have kept quiet about this piece of luck. (This blue sun orchid is spotted and I photographed it near home, when orchid hunting with friends - a surprisingly enjoyable pastime each spring.) Besides, it becomes a burden of responsibility, doesn't it - to keep out neighbouring cattle or horses, for example, to preserve the species (or subspecies) along with other people who own bushland (and appreciate it) and National Parks - if heavy-footed foreign creatures are kept out. One day we might put a covenant on our bushland with Trust for Nature to protect it forever, which will still allow us our cleared (non-bush) area for garden/ animals etc.

I forget exactly, but I think we've found 16 species of orchid in just 13 acres/ 5 ha (including an albino beard orchid). That's sure worth protecting. Forever.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

Ode to a Little White Hen

 

Our Light Sussex bantams are the prettiest birds imaginable; John's choice, if memory serves; they are flashy, bright white and banded black, firm of beak and fast of wing.

My choice, I think, were the softly coloured wyandottes, feathered with darker lines; with names like Toffee and Treacle, you can imagine the colouring.

Five years ago we started off with 2 of the Light Sussex bantams and I called them my Blondies, so (of course) they were called Debbie and Harry. (I love punk music, and pop music of the late `70's.) (Later joined by blond-tressed Gerri (Hall. Remember the `Let's Stick Together' video? Coolest model ever.)

All my girls have been raised from day-old chicks which makes them darn special. We've seen them learn to roost, learn to find the very best nest box, learn that I'm the Food Lady. Even learn my cough from the bedroom - which brings on a `we want pizza' sort of call. They've decided that Warrigal greens is their favourite of the greens. We've cracked it when they get clucky.

When the favourite (mercury-coloured Freddie, friendliest Freddie) got sick, we crossed that threshold, and took her to a vet. A few days of a chatty chook in a box in the house - boy, did I enjoy that, oh yes - a daily pill popped into the struggling beak and voilà, we have a happy layer again. Money well spent thank you.

So today was a bit different. Debbie had been a little off colour; then she couldn't get up to the roost at night (but that day was a public holiday);  today she was having trouble walking. Off to the wonderful bird vet. Is it infectious? (Hopefully not.)  Is it easily fixed? (Sadly, no.) Is she suffering? (Well, maybe, and not for any time longer.) Euthanasia please.

 

The wonderful vet goes to organise her things and this gives me time to stroke Debbie's white rump and those fabulous black feathers at her ruff.  It's a quiet chance to say good bye, it's peaceful, sweet, even.

Do we want to bring her home? Yes. She gets a pet's burial, of course, under a special shrub that will never be disturbed. And I have a white David Austin rose in a pot, bought when on a nursery visit with my sisters, that needs planting. (Rosa `Windermere', a creamy rose with `a strong fragrance with a hint of citrus', that reaches 1.2m and flowers forever.). Perfect.

I dig out some belladonna lilies and `plant' them both (pet then shrub) at the back of a border where there's lots of grey leaves (large-leaf Lamb's Ears; an unusual Ballota) and white, pink and purple flowers.

I have some black mondo grass in pots, too (from Mum's garden). They'd remind me of Debbie's beautiful ruff but...would they look nice or...I suspect, awful, under the rose. Packets of `black' and white tulips can look great, but it's a powerful combination which should be used with care, maybe amongst lots of green, and not permanently, like I'm proposing. Hmmm. I think Geranium phaeum instead, or Mourning Widow as it's known, with its little dark flowers over pretty, rounded clumps of greenery would look much better. And if the colours are only meaningful to me? No matter.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

White Flowers (and Other Colours in the Garden)

Yes, colour (or its absence) in the garden again.

I've just been chatting to an enthusiastic gardener - Merryn Maher of Banool, who I interviewed for Country Life Yarra Valley and Ranges, and found that roses were not her favourite plants, as I'd been led to expect, but a more subtle effect. No, as the weather warms, and her (large) garden becomes another room to live in, the hydrangeas begin flowering and she has white ones including oak-leaf hydrangea (H. quercifolia) and Hydrangea arborescens `Annabelle', planted in masses in beds designed by renowned designer Paul Bangay. These are her favourite plants - in her favourite time of year. White flowers under large shady trees; a garden of green and white. (And her favourite rose? A David Austin rose, `Abraham Darby', which has large cupped flowers of pink-apricot, which she loves for its rich fruity fragrance. Like other roses and flowers near her front door, it's chosen for its colour, its likeness to the honey-colour of the old stone house. `Abraham Darby' has a long flowering season, and the first flower has just come out on the sunny spring day I visit. Merryn picks a flower and we both inhale deeply with appreciation.) 

After the interview we reminisced about our favourite British gardens and discussed Hidcote Manor (the first serious garden of colours, and a great example) and then "The White Garden" at Sissinghurst Castle - and the importance of green (and lots of it) and structure in a white garden. (Should anyone else try a white garden? Now that's a whole extra story.) 

Unusually this gardener is keen on interesting plants (Paris, Trillium) yet employed an outstanding designer too, for structure and for plant palette too (and `masses, large numbers for quick effect').

Coincidentally she tells me of her love of white flowers just when my own garden has been filled - surreptitiously, it seems, by a glorious surfeit of dazzling bridal blooms (I notice when I get home) - the heavily-fragrant Mexican orange blossom (Choisya), the snowy Viburnum plicatum (top) and the dogwood laden with large flowers of purity, named - unfortunately - `Eddie's White Wonder'. There's the last of the Narcissus too (the Poet's daffodil, N. poeticus - why does this always make me think of the northern England's daffy-down-dilly, Wordsworth's daffodils, which are probably N. pseudonarcissus? The wildness, the simplicity, or the fact of being a species? Or just a love of very local common names; and they don't get much better than daffy-down-dilly).

Grey leaf campion (Lychnis) has white flowers just beginning its spring season; it's a sweet, subtle little plant that seems to be perennial for me, and self-sows so prolifically that it could easily become a weed - but I don't let it get a firm foot hold in. (There's the very pretty rose campion with deepest pink-cerise flowers but once you have that in your garden - it's there forever, and for me, when it's next to orange flowers, the effect jars badly; the flowers are swearing at each other. No, I may have very few red or orange flowers in the garden, but only the white form of campion for me, thank you. Just in case.)

Pure white are the first of the bearded iris, too (above), which have just unfurled their flags; these came from my sister. I love them.

(There's still lots of blue too: bugle (Ajuga (left) - covered in orange butterflies), Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and the first of the iris: mauve Pacific coast types, deep purple ones and a tall lilac iris, delicate-looking, tolerating the damp soil well and oh-so-pretty by the soft purple front gate. Along the front path, amongst the bugle, are windflowers (Anemone coronaria, so hardy) blue and white and single, my preference, and the last of the white tulips.)

So I'm looking at my white flowers, and my garden, with a fresh eye, which is always useful. For some people white is a non-colour, I know, and a let-down. But think how they (the flowers, not the people) emerge at dusk with a flourish, a `Here I Am' as the other colours recede.

For the lovers of green-on-green gardens, any flowers are a distraction; and if they're exotic flowers then lovers of native gardens - still so in vogue - will be against so many of them, which seems such a pity. (Indigenous is different, to me. There's a meaningful purpose to an indigenous corner of a garden, making it a wildlife habitat, perhaps, if plants are chosen carefully; but native gardens of plants from all over Australia? (Including plants from deserts and rainforests.) And no other country? Why? By the way, I use Correas and Scaevolas in my designs - because they are great plants - I am not averse to native plants of course.)

It's mid-spring - and the plants seem to know it. The Mexican orange blossom is so laden with blooms that the branches are arching over in a way I've never seen before, the Viburnum is dazzling and the dogwood (below) is cascading with its unusual flowers, each with 4 white bracts, more than ever before. Do I say thank you to the copious rain that never seems to stop?

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)