March 2022
March rolls in with cool mornings and evenings, which means the watering frenzy is slowing down, thank heavens.
Despite this, the garden is not really slowing down, the Lasiandras are starting to flower as is the lovely Plectranthus ecklonii. The Crocus and Colchicums are nearly at their best. Even more exciting, the bulb catalogues have started to arrive. There is nothing like buying plants by mail. The impatient waiting, the fear they may be left in some post office somewhere too long, the excitement on their arrival. Bliss. We made some purchases from Tesselaar this time – Cottage Gladioli Mix for cut flowers, Tulip Turkestan because it’s an unusual shape and Oriental Poppy ‘Louvre’, simply because it was lovely.
Even more exciting than that (if it could get anymore) is that we have decided to make some major changes in the garden. As Summer went on, we are becoming more and more aware that some of the garden beds are just not working, or the wrong plants are planted in them, or we just don’t like it anymore. So, March started with some dire actions.
The Back Veranda Gardens have been left to a point where a mutant Hydranga decided to grow across the bed from one side to the other on one mighty stem because it was too shaded by our Magnolia ‘Star Wars’– this had to go (the Hydranga, we mean). We cut it back to the ground and found ourselves with quite a bit of space to fill. The area is in part shade so perfect for some of our more delicate plants that had been spending the Summer in pots on the Back Veranda because we were too frightened to plant them anywhere –
But the main destruction occurred on the other side. We removed trees, mainly conifers and shrubs (this has to be done while Jenny is away so she can’t see it all happen), pulled out a rampant Rugosa Rosa (which will come back but this time we’ll be ready!) and pruned nearly everything else within an inch of its life! We uncovered a poor Prunus ‘Mt Fuji’ that must be wondering what happened, our Brugmansia has room to spread with its underplanting of Anemone nemerosa and the rest is open space to be filled. The one thing the bed needed was some tall shade, and we decided upon a bit of a showstopper.
That showstopper is Magnolia ‘Felix’, it’s like ‘Star Wars’ on steroids. We kid you not. It bears huge flowers over 30cm in size appear on bare stems in early spring with a lovely upright habit which is good for us as we wanted it to not be too spreading in the area we were developing. Just enough to throw a bit of shade.
And as if all this wasn’t enough, we replaced one of our water tanks. A galvanised steel number which decided to give up the ghost which I can understand since it’s been there for probably over 40 years. Unfortunately, while our contractor, Ian, was lifting the tank out of position, it decided it wasn’t going to go quietly, broke in half and crashed down on one of our stone walls. I kid you not. I will leave you with this image because what else can you say?
