Snowflakes and Moonlight

I'm sitting in my living room looking out through a south-facing window.

Sometimes the colours outside are yellow and blue (roses, iris) but right now they are peaceful and calming - in the colours of ice and moonlight.

Flowers of double oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia `Snowflake', below) have pure white florets emerging from soft green buds, in cone-shaped bunches - double flowers and oh-so-pretty. The panicles are a long, long way away from the old, big mop head type hydrangeas that aren't...subtle. These oak-leaf hydrangeas have been flowering for a month or 2 now and barely needed a haircut. Looking closer at the flowers, you see a little soft apple-green, too; exquisite! I love the autumn foliage too: a few red leaves, but most leaves kept on, green, through the winter months.

Tall lilies (probably Lilium auratum hybrids, top), have opened large blooms of soft primrose; I love them. In morning sun, they've not gotten sunburnt like some other lilies in the garden and they're tolerating the hot weather well (nearly 40°C the other day). These, the packet said, were about a metre high. Imagine my dismay when they didn't fit into the planned garden scheme but poked their heads up high, swaying over the Anemone sylvestris and Trollius, enjoying the view. But...I can enjoy them from my window, and when the flowers are over, I'll cut them down to about a metre high or less. They still flower each year with this treatment - perhaps with less flowers, but then, luckily, I don't like them top-heavy, falling over, with huge bunches of flowers.

However, there's only 2 plants. So maybe in winter I'll dig up the bulbs and pull off a few scales (modified leaves, like the rings in an onion) to make more plants. (This way of propagating isn't just cheaper; it leads to swathes of identical plants, for great effects and the less-is-more design principle: not too many types of flowers.) In my country garden I need several of each type of plant to avoid spottiness and to create great garden pictures.

Lemon cape fuchsia (Phygelius aequalis, above), further back, is nearly 2m high and spreading; moreover its blooms bring in the honeyeaters. I'm quite ambivalent about this plant; I don't like the woodiness - especially in winter, after it's had a trim. It's starting to spread, too. I often consider removing it but then I think about its mid-green foliage in the warm months (it doesn't seem to burn and needs not a skerrick of water), and most of all, its bird-attracting qualities (in summer, too!). This lemon-flowering species is so much prettier than its salmon cousins, and its colour is delicate - a good thing now, while the subshub is covered in flowers. I like luring honeyeaters near the windows (with Salvias, Correas, and this cape fuchsia) along with the little birds that come to the birdbaths. All I can do is cut back the cape fuchsia hard in winter, pull out suckers, and - enjoy it now.

And I am.

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.jillweatherheaddesign.com.au)