I’ve been working my way through a lengthy list of Things to Do in the garden – none of which I will bore you with here. You know the drill … cut back, tidy, dead head, prune, chop, feed, mulch, plan, re-pot, plant, prepare … and then still lots more to do. One of the advantages of all this activity is that cutting back the tired summer growth seems to bring the [...]

Some tree hugger in Austin, Texas told me to do it! But unlike Cat who has photographic evidence, there was nobody around to catch me in the act so I can’t prove it. But I hugged my tree today. And it didn’t feel weird. Really it didn’t. Try it! And I found a really welcome little surprise. The Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) which I have growing at the base of the huge [...]

My garden is a hive of bird activity at the moment. The Starlings are loving the berries on the massive Willow-like Shinus that stands in the front garden and at any given time during the day there seem to be about thirty to forty of them there at a time, eating the red berries and swooping down to my pond for a drink from the bird baths and a swim. They chatter [...]

I’m quite pre-occupied with my pond make-over project at the moment so I’ve been perusing “pond” books at the book store and have even bought a few. Most have been fairly useful, in one way or another, but none has actually motivated me to make the changes to the pond I know are necessary. Until I walked past a second-hand book shop and decided to look in and see what gardening books [...]

I would not be a true South African gardener if I did not have this wonderful indigenous plant in my garden – Dietes grandiflora. I’ve briefly discussed Dietes before – it is a reliable plant in my garden and forms part of what I consider the  “background planting”. It forms a stunning backdrop to all my other foliage and flowering plants and is beautiful in its own right. Also known as Wild [...]

I’ve been hunting for Artemesia Powiss Castle for a while. Barbie has one she bought at a specialist nursery (Heaven Scent) in Elgin about a year ago. I’m always admiring it when I visit her. Its grown from a tiny little plant into an impressive shrub she has planted with her roses. I love it as an accent plant for its lovely silver foliage. None of the local nurseries seem to stock [...]

It’s the 16th day of March which means its time to join Pam at Diggings for March Foliage Follow Up, the monthly gardening meme where garden bloggers showcase the beauty of foliage in their gardens. At no time has it been more obvious to me than over the last few weeks, just how important foliage is in the garden. With no mass displays of gorgeous blooms my garden would have been a [...]

The simmering heat of Summer should be behind us on this our 13th combined post for March’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Instead we are battling temperatures in the high 30′s this week – 39° today again and not even a hint of a breeze! We are both looking for that zing again that has us babbling on about our gardens. The heat has taken its toll, but with the resilience we have [...]

As Summer turns to Autumn it’s time take part in the quarterly gardening meme by PlantPostings called “Garden lessons learned“. Looking back over the last three months and taking stock of the garden reminds me of the lessons I’ve learnt over the Summer months. Just when I thought I was becoming a fully fledged gardener, Mother Nature dished up Summer and cut me down to size – and I humbly concede that [...]

The days are getting shorter and the nights are longer again as we look forward to the cooler weather that comes with Autumn. While Diana in Porterville is enjoying her Nandina for autumn colour, Barbie’s garden in Philadelphia survived the heat of the summer and is still producing an abundant harvest, my garden here in the Southern Suburbs is giving me a few new gray hairs. Last year the Camellias started flowering on [...]