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Barbie's garden Christine's garden Gardening

The Gardening Blog begins

SunflowersA life-time of friendship is indeed very, very special. Anyone who has one will agree – there is nothing quite like having a very best friend that really knows you through and through, has been witness to all your life’s successes and failures, been with you through the ups and downs and remains … your best friend! I consider myself very fortunate to have such a friend in Barbie.

We’ve been friends since as long as I can remember, but we’ve only recently become “gardeners”. The idea for this blog came to me after a conversation we had on New Years Day (2011). Barbie and I have always had the ability to spend hour upon hour with each other, talking non-stop. We never seem to run out of things to talk about. But back to my inspiration … Barbie told me that after one of our recent marathon “talk sessions”, her hubby Hannes asked her “what do you talk about for so long …” and she realised that we now spend a lot of time discussing our gardens. So the idea for this blog developed from that conversation.

We both live in the Western Cape – I live in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town and Barbie lives in the village of Philadelphia near the Cape West Coast (just before Malmesbury). It’s about a 45 – 50 minute drive from here and as we are both busy with our businesses and families I don’t get to see her garden as often as I would like. We thought this blog would be a great way to share our gardening experiences with each other by uploading photographs and posting our latest “gardening news”. It will be fun to see how our gardens develop and progress over time!

PS: I chose the “sunflowers” photograph for this first post as a symbolic photo – two sunflowers – that’s me and Barbs (I’m the one of the left, she’s on the right, that’s because she’s taller than me!)

By Christine

Dominated by large trees on a medium sized property, my garden is very shaded. With no “full sun” areas I have to plant shade and partial shade loving plants. I love shrubs and flowers including camellias and azaleas but Roses and Irises are my favourite and getting these to thrive is a challenge …