Fw: This Medit-garden on Christmas Eve

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-----Original Message-----
From: t*@picknowl.com.au <t*@picknowl.com.au>
To: l*@ucdavis.edu <l*@ucdavis.edu>
Cc: Mediterannean Plants List <m*@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Thursday, December 23, 1999 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: This Medit-garden on Christmas Eve

"Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning.", so it looks like rain tonight or maybe tomorrow for Christmas Day. These summer storms are the tail end of the monsoons that sweep across NW Australia in summer. Most often they don't come so far South, petering out somewhere over the Red Heart - The Great Sandy Desert and Sturt's Stony Desert of Central Australia. Tho' the sky is very threatening it could easily come to nothing but a scorching hot blast of North wind and great rolling clouds of dust. Any rain at this time of year is a bonus, the last few drops before the great drought begins. If it should rain tomorrow it won't spoil my day. It will be most welcome even though the garden is going dormant everywhere.

So what is there in flower at the tail end of the growing and flowering season? Well, not much. There are Agapanthus in variety, about 30 fifferent kinds, mainly cultivars with a scattering of species and some named hybrids. Incidentally, who has tried the 'new' scented Agapanthus - blue and white? I couldn't find any their perfume any more noticeable than in the common kinds. There are a few last iris growing where the septic overflow soaks away and elsewhere Dietes iroides and D. robinsoniana flower strongly. My own various Hemerocallis seedlings are at an end. Mostly yellow kinds, and spidery, I keep them because they flower so well in rather dry conditions where imported hybrids fail to perfom. I never expected varieties from Florida or Ohio and California to do well, but experience shows that plants from closer to home - Victoria and Queensland do not do amywhwere near so well as those grown and selected here. Having moved on from being a collector I now no longer care about having named cultivars or big prize winners. I just want plants that will 'do' here. The roses have all finished and as I won't be watering them through the summer they will be entering a kind of dormancy until the rains of late April bring on a flush of blooms. Along the fences and scrambling over shrubby Artemisias are hybrids of Clematis viticella. These are superb now and have proven to be the best plants I ever imported; well worth the costs of de-potting, de-soiling, bundling, packing, quarantine export inspection, air-freight, more quarantine inspections this end and then the costs of being held in quarantine for months and months until the plants showed new growth that had no signs of malformation that could be caused by disease, pests, viruses etc. I would not be without these hardy performers: Etoile Violette, Betty Corning, Royal Velours, Blue Belle, Margot Koster, Venosa Violacea, Alba Luxurians, Huldine, Sodertalje, and Purpurea Plena Elegans, plus a half a dozen slightly variable plants of Clermatis viticella itself. There are also other clematis too - campaniflora, viorna, recta, recta Purpurea, texensis and texensis hybrids.

There are one or two Salvias in bloom too - S. corrugata (already mentioned in this group) and S. x Waverley, a hybrid of corrugata. Then there is a large stand of Salvia guaranitica that attains about 2.5m, upright and vivid cobalt blue. I have a smaller group of S.x 'Argentine Skies' but they are not in flower yet. The rest I find difficult without recourse to summer irrigation, while some I'd love to have such as S. gesneriflora and S. mexicana 'Limelight' are too cold tender for our winter winds. (One of these years I'll get my greenhouse fixed and then I will be able to overwinter a few such gems.)

The hedge of Chinese Star Jasmine around the swimming pool is in full bloom. Intertwined with it is an Australian native jasmine. I think it is Jasminum australe but lost the label years ago. It has a quiet charm and some status as a local but couldn't compete with J. polyanthum.

Ferula communis is showing a fine head of seeds but for some unknown reason the whole stem has turned upside down.

In pots on the verandah and by the back door we have Rhodendron vireya hybrids in pure hot, tropical colours oranges and pinks and a lovely old creamy white form called 'Gardenia'. These are backed up with a variety of ferns and hostas, one or two weeping cut-leaf maples on standards and a growing number of Oriental lilium hybrids. i will have toi curtail my interest in these as I must be approaching saturation point with them and don't want to have so many they become a burden to care for.

I've just found a dealer in unusual succulent plants and have renewed my boyhood enthusiasm for them by purchasing a number of caudiciform plants - Ficus palmeri, Adenium obesum, Sinningia leucotricha, a begonia sp from Madagascar with a huge 'bulb' at the base of it's stem, and Bursera fagaroides. These are all seedlings yet, but they seem to be settling well and moving away with new growth. To them I've added as many echeveria hybrids as I can muster. These colourful cabbages, rather like ornamental kales - tho' that is too, too crude a comparison, are easy and pleasing pot plants for sunny spots that get some sun protection during the day as the shadows move across our front and back verandahs. So far we've got 'Bittersweet', agavoides, agavoides New Form, agavoides var Corderoi, gilva, 'White Rose', 'Curly Locks', 'Katella 4', 'Red Edge', 'Violet Queen', lilacana, 'Silver on Red', 'Topsy Turvy'. And then there are my new Yucca's; too small to go in the garden yet but planned for and most welcome. I've looked out for those with 'blue' foliage such as Y. rigida, Y. thompsoniana, as well as those with absolutely no spines at the leaf tips - Y. baileyi and Y. arkansana. Plenty to look forward to with those so I'm not the least concerned about my 'lapse of taste' in deciding not to keep on soaking my David Austin roses all summer long.

No hose lugging for me; no unblocking mini-jet systems, no sucking out mouthfuls of ants and ant eggs from stopped up poly pipes, no swealtering and sweating to maintain an English look garden in the drought. I'll be doing what my body tells me - keeping out of the sun, staying cool and resting up ready for working in the garden when the season turns.

Happy Christmas and a great Medit-Plants New Year

trevor n

Trevor Nottle
Garden Historian, Garden Writer, Designer, Consultant
WALNUT HILL, 5 Walker Street, Crafers, SA 5152 AUSTRALIA
Tel./ Fax. 61 8 83394210