The cold winter days are great for many of my favourite
spring bulbs, particularly tulips (which I can now leave in the (cooler) ground
all year - good news for a lazy gardener); and cold autumn nights are good for
glowing autumn foliage on deciduous trees and shrubs. And we receive more rain
than the western suburbs get: fantastic!
Summers are just as hot - where I am, at just 170m, as
central Melbourne (with its sea breezes) - but winters are colder, and so one
bulb behaves noticeably differently - so far.
Amongst the little daffodils near the front path -
blooming profusely in shades of beaten egg just now - I've popped in a mixture
of blue and white shades of Anemone
coronaria (above), reputedly a spring bulb (or tuber, really), which have
been in bud since July and flowering since August, their mainly single flowers
gazing at the sky. I love the blue-black centre and the ring of smoky blue
anthers.
When I lived in Melbourne I gardened on sandy loam - the
key perhaps - and left Anemone coronaria in
the ground all year and they would pop up in autumn, begin flowering then, and
continue the show right through winter and spring. This windflower- sometimes
called poppy anemone - is a very cheap bulb which means I can try the
experiment here, too, even though this area gets a bit boggy at times which
most bulbs do not like (excepting the
alpine ones - and only at snow melt time).
Anemone coronaria comes
in red (delicious in the wild, I'm sure, and (to me) very like Marcus Harvey's
`Dancing windflower', Anemone pavonina,
http://hillviewrareplants.com.au/nursery-catalogues/2014-seed-list-wild-collected);
and hectic pink too so I choose the bulbs carefully in autumn. A mix of all the colours is hard on the eye;
and even deep blue and white are harshly different so I love the new(ish) mix
of blue, white and white-suffused blue sometimes available (occasionally, if
memory serves, called Seaside Mix). These are single ones, in the De Caen
group: hybrids cultivated first in the districts of Caen and Bayeux in France
in the 18th century. Single ones, to my eye, are elegant where the doubles are
(relatively) messy; taste is always an
interesting attribute to observe.
My mix has thrown up a double blue and a soft amethyst;
shall I be strong and pull them out? And the tubers of deep blue ones I found
in a cupboard: shall I toss them in the ground here and hope for even more
flowers this season? May be yes and yes.
*We came up here from the suburbs 20 years ago for the
space, the peace and quiet, the wildlife, the cooler climate, to live amongst
the handsome trees and bushland...and (of
course) the serenity. All that doesn't completely explain it; I just love
being here (and still feel delight in my good fortune). My Mum and Dad had
a bush block in the Dandenong Ranges, too, when I was a child so maybe that's
why I felt like I was coming home when we
purchased our property. (A friend calls Melbourne a concrete jungle. I
try to not be so impolite.) Within the comforting cloak of 12 acres of bushland
chock-block full (I hope) of gliders and owls is a roughly one acre scotch egg of house,
exotic garden, and orchard of heritage apples and pears and frost-tolerant
citrus trees. I suppose I am just not a city person (although being on
Melbourne's fringe has its benefits). And having space for a bigger garden
is...pretty awesome.
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)
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