Brighten up the darkest days
HOW’S your garden looking? To be honest, mine’s a bit woebegone but I don’t think I’m alone. The deciduous trees and shrubs are just about bare and the ground is covered with fallen leaves. The roses need pruning – but I am hanging off a bit longer as this is a job for late winter – the lawn looks quite shaggy, and there’s mud underfoot due to recent rain.
It’s not all bad. There are trees and shrubs hanging on to their leaves making it feel like it’s still autumn. The laburnum arch is a mass of golden leaves and the snowball bush (Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile’) is well clothed in russet brown leaves. The wisteria’s looking pretty good too with a mass of yellow leaves.
The garden is still productive. I can pick a pretty bunch of flowers and I can always find something to harvest, despite the best efforts of flocks of currawongs that have descended on the apple trees in the past few weeks stripping off most of the fruit.
Actually there’s a lot going on outdoors, even though it’s officially the beginning of winter. There’s a constant stream of tiny birds finding food among the squat seed heads that are sheltering among the collapsing leaves of the gunnera (Gunnera macrophylla) beside the pond.
Outside the bedroom window, the huge arching branches of the red cestrum (Cestrum ‘Rubra’) are coming back into flower and are well visited by nectar-loving birds big and small probing its tubular flowers. So far no one has bothered with the rowan berries so they’re adding a confetti-like splash of pink and white.
Also looking good is a tall, pink-flowered shrub called anisodontea (Anisodontea capensis). It has small, pink, hibiscus-like flowers and slightly furry maple-shaped leaves.
Anisodontea, also called African mallow, is an evergreen shrubby perennial that never seems to stop flowering. It’s one of the plants still providing flowers for picking as we head into winter.
It started off as a small twiggy plant last spring and now it’s more than 2m high. I never expected it to do so well or get so big.
It probably needs a good cut back but I don’t want to risk it in the cold weather.
New growth
Other flowers adding winter cheer are pink and white sasanqua camellias, clumps of white nerines and the deep pink, purple and green heads of hydrangeas. These should last well into winter before they too need pruning.
It’s a race between the cold and the tree dahlia, which is still to flower. The other dahlias though have crumpled and are on the pruning list along with the brown-headed stems of sedum, a plant that looked so lovely a few months ago.
There have been some surprises too, such as the oriental poppy, which offered up a late large red flower and is still pushing on with a second bud. Also still flowering is a white delphinium, which keeps producing stems of flowers.
At ground level lots of bulbs are already sending up green leaves promising future flowers.
They’ll soon be joined by hellebores, which are budding up nicely.
The bare soil in the vegie patch, now the beans and tomatoes have been cleared away, holds potential as there’s room for broadbeans, more spinach and another crop of snow peas.
My neighbour had a surfeit of purple sprouting broccoli seedlings, which she’s passed on to me.
They will also be going into the vacant space. These offer small but tasty and colourful heads of broccoli that keep on providing for many weeks.
What to plant now
Winter is also planting time for bare-rooted fruit trees and shrubs. They need crosspollination for successful cropping so plant the necessary pollinator or buy a plant that has been multigrafted with a pollinator. If harvests have been poor in the orchard, fruit set may be improved by planting another variety for cross pollination. Where space is tight, look for varieties grafted on to dwarf rootstock.
What to sow now
What to sow and plant this month (seeds unless noted) Ornamentals: Camellias (pots), carnation (seedlings), chrysanthemum (pots), cineraria (seedlings), cornflower (seedlings), cyclamen (pots), daphne (pots), deciduous trees (bare rooted or pots), delphinium (seedlings), echinacea, forget-me-not, freesia (bulb), hellebore (pots), hollyhock (seedlings), hyacinth (bulb), Iceland poppy (seedlings), Italian lavender, lilium (bulbs), lobelia (seedlings), pansy (seedlings), polyanthus (seedlings), poppy, primula (seedlings), rose (bare rooted), viola (seedlings), wallflower (seedlings) Edibles: Asian greens, asparagus (crowns), broad beans (seedlings), broccoli (seedlings), cabbage (seedlings), deciduous fruit trees (bare rooted), English spinach, garlic (bulb), grapevine (bare rooted), lettuce, onions, peas, shallots, silverbeet.