Bird Bath Activity

 

Checking the CFA fire danger ratings it's our first `Extreme' fire danger day of the summer season so we've checked our hens and watered the vegie patch and left early for the safety of the suburbs.

But not before filling up the bird baths. It's been so hot and dry, and today will be windy, and the little birds need the water.

They say to have shallow water that's not too deep for the little birds that I love so much - do they think they will drown when they drink or bathe? - but a wonderful pottery bowl I have in the garden, made by my mother-in-law when she was a pottery teacher, is rendered shallow by the placement of a central large stone. The little birds love it: blue fairy wrens, scrub wrens, Willie wagtails. Occasionally silver-eyes and tree creepers. Yellow robins splashing as they take a bath early in the morning.

Before the wallaby-proof fence gave me my garden: Ms wallaby supped from this bowl too; now, heavy with joey (so appropriate, one feels, in the week before Christmas) she must detour to the dam and drink there.

As the lawn browns off, quickly, the last of the grass seed is taken by re-browed finches moving through the lawn while the fairy blue wren couple still (!) are constantly admiring themselves in the window (not like the fighting of years ago); how do they find time to forage for food?

Honeyeaters seem to be in an endless quest for nectar, darting from flower to flower; salvias in particular. I'm not sure if many native plants are blooming for them just now - other than the lovely tree, Victorian Christmas Bush (Prostanthera lasianthos); but a lovely lemon Phygelius planted by the rusty treble clef `statue' brings in these birds and - luxury - they can perch on the structure as they sip the flowers; planted, by chance, outside a window so I see the shenanigans.

I'd assumed - wrongly - that I lived amongst this wealth of bird life because I live outside Melbourne and I am lucky enough to live amid a couple of hectares of bushland. But chatting to - I hope - new friends at a party last weekend - residents of Melbourne - has disabused me of this notion. We chatted about this and that bird that we were lucky enough to have visit our gardens; kindred spirits. (And she like frogs, too.) Then she mentioned feeding magpies - those larger birds of great character - with mince meat. Turning to J: `we can't do that can we?'; rhetorical; we're vegetarian. `Cheese works' we were told and while I love the idea there's problems. Apart from the arguments about feeding wild creatures (and the problems they face when you go away) J points out something very obvious about upsetting our present, pleasant balance: don't encourage big birds which will scare away (or eat) all the sweet little birds I love so much.

And we do see big ones, actually, sometimes: goshawks and eagles in the sky, tawny frogmouths in the gum trees, ducks visiting the dam, powerful owl hooting some nights.

So I won't feed the magpies but I rather wish they'd come down and pounce on the blackbirds - imported from Britain - scratching mulch from one end of the garden to the other.

And the hens? They have virtual air-conditioning. We have 2 baths (yes, baths) of raspberry plants in their run, well-watered, and underneath them is a very cool spot for our girls to sit the hot hours out. But please, girls, when laying, please don't get clucky today.

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)

Clematis, Iris and Metal Wigwams

 

The roses may be nearly over but Japanese iris - purple ones near the purple gate (a happy accident) - and clematis are flowering profusely.

Some of the clematis I bought last year were in 20cm (8-inch) pots and they romped up their supports like there was no tomorrow. I'm delighted with these supports: 2 metal wigwams, each placed centrally in a cut-flower bed, with a very simple design to link to the rough teatree tripods within the adjacent edible patch. Something fancy would have looked out of place.

Some of the clematis are C. viticella hybrids: dainty, sweet.

Nearby, I've added a Clematis viticella cultivar, a pale one, to my chicken run, too, to give my girls some summer shade, and discovered something 25 years late. I worked in a retail plant nursery a life time ago for nearly a year and well-remember tying up climbers: I was taught not to trim them, but to loop them and tie them up. Well, I've finally bought one just like this, unravelled the vine carefully and dang me, I've got a 2m high climber already (that's taller than me!) and while a lot of the vine is woody, to my surprise I didn't harm it when I untangled it; no, I have a healthy, instantly tall plant. All those years of doubt...answered. Now to remove the last of the woody, dead and oh so enormous kiwi plant (not my choice) which blankets the run - now a skeleton, it waves metres above the run.

As usual the clematis plants in the cut-flower beds were carefully chosen for colour: pink and whites on one hexapod (amid pink and white cut flowers - white Narcissus and pink and white lilies etc), and blues and white for the other (amid bluebells, yellow Narcissus, white belladonna lilies).

To complete it, there's a row of huge, silver-leaf plants of globe artichokes behind each bed; I love the look of these when they're in full leaf. My problem is I like even my cut flower beds to look good all the time - it's a tall order, isn't it? 

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)

An Intriguing Scent in the Air; White Flowers at Dusk; Blood-red Lilies

A hot, late-spring day and I'm watering my pots by the back door in the early morning. I'm nowhere near any roses but suddenly there's a sweet scent in the air and I have to find out where it's coming from. I'm getting warmer, then colder...could it possibly be the hydrangeas (no), Thalictrum (no), Asiatic lilies (unlikely, and no)?

I'm sniffing about like some half-crazed blood hound until I track it down: metres away are that tough-as-old-boots evergreen shrub, mock orange (Philadelphus (named for `brotherly love') coronarius (Syn. Philadelphus mexicanus) below), many of them, all suddenly covered in down-turned cream cups exuding sweet perfume. Who knew it could waft so effectively?

What a great moment to discover, or rediscover, a creamy-white flower in the garden; I've been contemplating white flowers: I love the way they gleam at dusk.

Near the dining room door is a dwarf mock orange with sweet white flowers just now too. And beyond this is a new bed where I've been replanting dwarf white dahlias from a new path area, need to plant a dwarf white Gladiolus (a seedling of `The Bride' that I spied at Kallista market), and had that dreaded thought, what if I had a white (and green) garden. Noooo!

My brother-in-law would call this `Little Sissy' and quite right. How easy to fall into the trap of mimicking that sensational, beloved garden room at Sissinghurst Castle, the White(-and-Green) Garden where Vita Sackville-West thought aloud, so to speak, via her newspaper articles, as she planned it in the 1930's.

I'll never do it 1/10 as well as Vita and I refuse to try. And yet, the mind wanders...

I love the way white flowers come alive, and glimmer and shimmer at dusk, as all the colours recede. And this bed is between the pink-and-crimson roses and the blue-and-yellow cut flower bed (with just one other bulb bed between them as well). White separating them seems like a good idea, if a little harsh.

An email from a sister seems to set the seal on the plan: ` Do you want white bearded irises, I want to get rid of some. See you Sunday.' (I reply: ` I'd LOVE some white bearded iris, thank you. Would you like belladonna lilies, hellebores or obedient plant (tall, mauve)? I am enjoying the garden so much. Roses! Iris! Did I mention roses? And would you like some eggs?) (Please remember that my roses have never flowered before, kind reader. The munching marsupials have access, now, to only a dozen of our 13 acres. But not my ½ acre garden any longer. Hurrah.)

White iris...

My imagination takes flight far too quickly. I'm peopling the bed: peonies, poppies, Plectranthus, pansies even. All white.

This will be no grand plot but a little patch of evening glow. Let's add Bouvardia for perfume, too.

Maybe some scattering of seeds: tall perfumed Nicotiana; Cleome and cosmos for autumn; most of all, that flower I met in the Mediterranean 5 years ago, Orlaya grandiflora, with flat Queen Anne's Lace-heads unusually dappled with their outer ring of larger tear-drop petals. (I have Orlaya near the front door and must collect seeds of this exquisite ephemeral, top.)

Add bulbs like winter snowdrops, and winter and spring white daffodils, and spring and summer lilies to extend the season, all arctic white. Even Galtonia candicans, that elegant bulb, with tall stalks of clipped bell flowers, bridal-white in mid-summer; these were blooms in my sister's wedding bouquet, I believe, in the 1970's. Or so Mum used to say; I like these family stories. (I was 10.)

Suddenly my mere dozen square metres are stuffed full. I need to take some plants out again - quickly.

It needs lashings of green and so for edging, along with white cranesbills I might plant white Scaevola, neat, green with a sprinkling of small flowers which don't overwhelm. And dwarf greenish Nicotiana, below, maybe; almost invisible by day, but beaming light at dusk; extraordinary.

But...I've already planted a pale pink Thryptomene in the centre, perfect for its height and width (that sounds dreary) and its so-elegant arching branches of little myrtaceous flowers. Perhaps I'll add pale pink flowers to the white plants; a link to the adjacent pink rose bed; and hope my pale pink Astrantia (currently in pots) will like this hot sunny spot. 

No, I think a touch, just a touch of burgundy as well, amongst all the baby-doll-pink and white will lift the bed enormously. Maybe Sanguisorbia `Red Thunder' with little heads of strong hue held on wiry stems - nearer burgundy than red, I hasten to add (like too many misnamed plants). I think this will work really well.

Unlike...I too often mention my silver and raspberry bed, perhaps, expanded now with blackberry and cherry and strawberry colours to become a summer pudding kaleidoscope. It's given me a lot of pleasure this spring and I expected cherry-coloured Asiatic lilies to continue the joy. But Oh No! Blood Red! (Below.) They clash and look hideous against the raspberry Salvia, against the black (blackberry) hollyhock, cherry Nicotiana, and the various other pinks. Out they'll come tout de suite. (Maybe they need their own bed. And may the odds be ever in their favour.)

 And then I'll be back to enjoying again the plume poppy (Macleaya) in particular at the back, tossing its gorgeous silvery leaves in this breeze. (I've been longing to grow this perennial for a score years or more. (Wandering wallabies found it delicious.)) With the lilies gone I'll assess the pink-lilac Centaurea: great foliage, silver, and so perfect here, but are the flowers too mauve? Let's wait a few days to evaluate that one. 

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)

 

Spring Wildflowers and Our Garden In the Bush

 Our bushland has erupted in orange, yellow and white (and a touch of blue).

Two orange pea flowers are blooming (including Dillwynia, below), lemon paperbark (Melaleuca) and Goodenia (below) have little yellow flowers and teatree is showy with masses of pure white myrtaceous flowers.

And my all-time favourite, butterfly flag (Diplarrena moraea, above), like white butterflies hovering at about 1.2m high: lots of them this year, and we've planted some near our front path and little purple gate, inside and outside the wallaby-proof fence. There may be tiny blue stars, too (top).

Then you enter the garden and it's yellow and blue (at first) - but the flowers are bigger, so it's a bit of a shock...or is that expected of a garden?

What's more, it hit me this week, that our garden is a little clearing in the forest (or bushland). Odd, I hear you say; how can you not know that? Well, our garden is fairly open and looks across the valley to a forested hillside (lucky us). But where there was no trees between us and the property (not garden) gate above us, just `fill', we've allowed too many native trees to grow, and grow too tall. Suddenly they're triffids, battering on the garden fence, it seems. But benign, if a bit sun-robbing (in winter) and giving us privacy and - all of a sudden - a feeling I like, that we are miles from civilization, in a cocoon of gentle nature (yes, rose-colored glasses), away from the hurly burly of city life, at a slower pace. The garden is still open on the downhill side, so ducks can still swoop in to land, easily, on our dam, but now there's bushland (bush I was taught to love, not fear, by my English (botanist) mother, as a child) on every side, all around the garden.           .

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)

 

My First Real Season of Roses

This is my first real season of roses.

How the heck a plant so prickly (yes, roses have prickles, not thorns) can be so delicious to a wallaby is incomprehensible. But it's almost a year to the day since the wallaby-proof fence started to work and the garden began to recover.

Plants grew, but also I stopped chasing Ms Wallaby and now she's fairly tame (for a wild creature), freezing on the spot if we leave the garden for, say, the carport, and only reluctantly moving off if we get too close, or we're near her for too long. We see her nearly every day - a great pleasure - and watch her joeys grow each year. (One acre - counting orchard, chickens and edible patch too - for us, and a dozen acres (and 2 dams) for her and her joeys sounds fair to me.)

Just now the garden is filled with iris - about 6 kinds - and the first roses are peeping out. (Iris are a great floral baton between the tulips and daffodils, and the first roses.) Now I've bravely, or foolishly, taken off safety netting from all the  garden plants leaving only a few upturned hanging basket frames - which don't look too bad - over little treasures.

 

I didn't plant roses until I was in my 40's and while I enjoyed the effect of cool yellow roses with deep blue Siberian iris last year, somehow this year my heart leapt higher with the first bloom of so-called `Princess Anne' (above), with colour calling out from across the garden. Whatever she really is, she's a stronger pink than she's meant to be, which means she will contrast too strongly with `Wisley' (top) and similarly pale `Souvenir de la Malmaison' (the latter named in 1844 for the home of the Empress Josephine - the "Godmother of modern rosomaniacs") in front of her - but this rose is more interesting, and the effect is glorious. Maybe I just prefer pink.

 

But - I'm still enjoying my new yellow roses (`Graham Thomas', below, fading from its gold buds), or near yellows (`Teasing Georgia' (above) - my notes say `amazing scent'; the flowers are often more yellow; is this due to soil type?) in or near the sun and sky bed.

Importantly, they are shrub roses - no lollipops in this garden (although real, huge lollipops would be fun) (even if I wanted shrub lollipops, I wouldn't introduce them: J is depressed enough right now seeing my `Tiny Trev' lilly pillies  trimmed into - close to - spheres; too formal for him, but with structure I like, that the billowing garden really needs; I tell him, consolingly, that they'll never look perfect); shrub roses that mingle nicely with iris, tulips, cranesbills. It's an English garden I guess - with the influence of my British (gardener and botanist) mother - perhaps. (An artist friend calls it a storybook garden. Her delicious garden is a tapestry garden.)

So it's my first real season of roses - with new blooms every day I am like a girl looking at Christmas presents piling up under the tree.

I love seeing roses from the house, I like anticipating their perfume (almost all are David Austin roses), each so different, and I'm holding my breath waiting for my first proper rose season as the bushes are growing and producing buds in profusion for the first time. What is it about roses that makes them so special?

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)

 

Snow - of sorts - on these Hot Spring Days

 

Snow - it seems - is raining down onto my stone seat and the bird bath. An impossibility, on these warm days? (And some sort of opposite tautology; can snow rain down?)

My weeping white wisteria tree, or Robinia, has pure white petals which are constantly drifting down, coating the ground. But when the rosellas visit and nip off whole flower stalks, the confetti becomes more like heavy rain than soft blossom.

Last year Ms Wallaby (pictured below) ate a lot of the fresh fallen blossom but this year I have a thick blanket of snow-white petals, particularly pleasing where new shrubs are still very small. (Any minute I expect a Hollywood movie-style wedding party to arrive.) It's extraordinarily beautiful and not what I expected or planned when we built our little wallaby-proof garden fence.

A wonderful surprise.

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)

 

Avian Visitors and Residents

 

Have I become invisible - a part of the furniture - or like those trains in the night, loudly rattling past, that people on the line no longer notice?

Our little wrens by the back door - white-browed scrub-wrens - seem to have laid another clutch of eggs in J's old hat (see posts 5/9/15, 26/9/15, last picture) - and they've definitely hatched. But now, no longer do the adults put on hold every planned nest swoop when they see me; and even when I'm about 2m away, hanging out washing, they no longer pay me any attention. Better yet, they hop all around the clothes line above my head (if I freeze), 30cm (one foot) above me until they finish looking for danger, and decide where next to dart, foraging for morsels for their voracious young. 

Meanwhile Mr and Mrs Superb Blue Wren (above) are `flirting' by the southern window distracting  me from my work. Afterwards: preening each other, and blue-bejewelled male hopping back and forth over drab female as both looked into the house, taking `selfies'. A week later they are still flirting; surely they should be building a nest? (That blessed - there is no comparable secular word - rain has spurred on garden, weeds; and also, best of all, birds to try another clutch of eggs.)

It's a wonderful change from many years ago when Mr Wren would fight his own reflection in the windows (`What's he doing in my patch?'). We'd put white paper strips here and there on the lowest 10cm of windows where the wren seemed to be fighting most which calmed things down. Don Burke used to say that birds got used to windows and stopped fighting their reflections. I didn't believe him then but now (after 20 years), I think they finally do (Sorry Don). This couple don't even seem to be visiting this odd foe in the house (and the female used to look for extra...activity from the mythical male), they've finally decided there's no risk, even - it really seems - they've realised it's their reflection and they like to watch themselves cavort on a window sill with just the right width.

They also visit me when I'm digging in the edible patch, looking for little bugs I guess, which is usually the role of yellow robins. Where are the robins? 

Precisely the other side of the house, to the north, I've mown my circular lawn again, but this rain has kept the annual grass going and there's still masses of seed. Often flocks of around 10 red-browed finches will move through the garden and they love the lawn at the moment. I felt a twang of guilt mowing yesterday but loads of short, seed-bearing stalks remained. Balancing a `Land for Wildlife' property with a human's often natural desire for neatness makes for an interesting conflict now and then. 

With wood ducks - and ducklings - along our street; powerful owls hooting at night; tree creepers and crimson rosellas in our trees; and honey eaters darting about the garden from flower to flower, the garden (and bushland) is wonderfully full of avian visitors (and some residents - a fantastic new phenomenon). All I have to do is top up the bird baths and remember to avoid using my raincoat by the wren's nest. No problem! 

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)