I have $10 to spend at Kings Plant Barn as I have points to redeem. Hooray!
I have just moved a pink cyclamen on Mt Asher as I saw a picture of them and they were growing out of rocks. They like good drainage, and to be under trees. Snowy's bed is just going to have white cyclamen.
Then the rain came down and the floods came up...
And now it's sunny again...Auckland weather! My boggy patch is flooded. I had a look in Palmer's Garden Manual of Trees and Shrubs and it says carex is a good plant for boggy patches. I will grow more there. It looks like I will have to move the two French lavenders to the sunny rock garden as I think maybe they may drown down the back with wet feet.
I think my garden has potential. Of course it doesn't look like much now but it was so much better than a year ago. A year ago, I had plants dying in pots as I didn't know where to put them..weeds all through the border..prickly roses that spread and hurt you...plants in the wrong places, undecorated walls...and nowhere to sit.
I am thinking I would like a wildish bushy garden down the back by extending the borders with maybe an oval clearing down where the rain gauge and weather station is...and then nearer the deck, a vege plot with raised beds near the garage. There will be a path around the border in a sort of sweeping trail but everywhere else will be plants. At the shady side of the garage I will put a fernery.
The front garden I will keep as is with the buxus hedges and contained herbaceous plants within and trees, and at the front, as the sunniest part of the garden with grapevines and olive trees, I will grow the flowers that enjoy the sun, and line the walls with sunflowers in pots.
Also I plan to grow Australian violets as the groundcover for the south side of the house and more ferns, and edge the path in bugleweed.
I would also like to snag a log from my friend to grow succulents or bromeliads on.
And also, against the brick wall an espalier of some kind, or maybe a climbing rose, clematis, and a little stone bench for sitting under an arbour. My garden arch I have not decided on yet, maybe as an entrance into the weather station. I don't know. I wonder if Dad would be mad when I start planting on the lawn. He will have less to mow!
