Melbourne is my city yet I'm not remotely football-mad -
but heck, it was good to see the underdogs, the Bulldogs, the team from the west
suburbs - win against Sydney. (After 62 years!) I hate myself for it, but it
seems I'm hopelessly parochial after all. Even the garden was barracking for my
home team: amongst the white tulips and blue Anemone coronaria a red tulip popped up, unbidden, to bestow the
right colours on the day (then the rogue was pulled out pretty darn quickly).
They made the sun shine (for a day)! Spring came roaring
in the day after the AFL Grand Final: bright sunshine, warm gusty winds,
temperatures above twenty degrees at last. And then again on Thursday. And
maybe, who knows, this weekend too. Perfect for tomato planting.
We threw off the second doona and I'm out to check out
the garden. The early bulbs are over but a few late daffodils are still softly
lemon and white; tulips pink and darkest plum; hellebores gently green.
It's time to plant tomatoes, classically, in the Emerald
city - Melbourne - between Grand Final Day and Melbourne Cup Day.
Call me crazy, but my new, fourth veg bed - dug over
after moving the pretty little hens onto the next-door patch of Warrigal greens
and spinach - is a chance for planting an edible patch in another colour
scheme. (My first was pink, purple and green; the next orange and red with
black kale; the most recent, and already quite colourful, is lemon, yellow,
gold against (again) darkest kale. All these were winter (edible) flowers and
vegetables. It's so much fun.)
This
is my first summer bed since starting to experiment and play with colour in the
culinary beds. I felt like having a rainbow; partly to fit in all my tomatoes,
yellow, orange, red, purple-black, and purple beans; and partly because I want
to toss rainbows everywhere, in a joyous show of solidarity with the LGBTI
community as we - maybe - inch towards a plebiscite on marriage equality, and
if so, unleash hate speech like never before. I'll be wearing rainbows, and
planting them, and thinking them. I'll make rainbow flower chains. Rainbow
cakes. (Maybe wearing rainbow hair. Hmmm.)
My rainbow veg bed is like refracted light, I like to
think, and I am looking for dwarf white English lavender to have at the
`start', on either side of the path. Next are some lemon-coloured French
marigolds I've planted, while I've scattered seed of more. Behind the path edging
of low edible flowers (marigolds, pansies, calendulas, nasturtiums) are taller
plants, and vegetables, beginning with tomatoes `Wapsipinicon' (`Yellow Peach'),
then orange `Sunrise Bumblebee', red `Periforme Albuzzo' and `Sweetbite' (J's
favourite) culminating, at the end, with `Black Cherry' and `Black Russian' (my
favourite). Yellow zucchini , red capsicum, purple eggplants - they'll fit into
the rainbow. A rainbow for rainbow rights.
So I seem to have started with masculine football and
ended somewhere different, and political (not for the first time, see posts 8/7/13;
27/9/15).
Just as the current fashion for edible garden is actually
underpinned by a concern for carbon miles, so does much of my garden have underlying
ideas. Only not, often, in the veg patch. Nor, too often, political. As garden
critic and feminist Germaine Greer says, `Gardening can be – should be – conceptual, which
is simply a way of saying that gardens should have ideas in them and the ideas
should be perceptible.' I love gardens with themes and ideas, making the garden
experience richer, like other art forms. Read more at http://www.nurseriesonline.com.au/garden-design/contemporary-garden-design/
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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