Dunedin
Margaret Barker’s winning trio.
Hard frosts hit with vengeance in August; until then, the Larnach Castle garden bloomed on. I’ve had a mission for every month of the year to be greeted by flowers: flowers for myself, for the visitors, the nectar-feeding birds, for the insects and beetles, the amphibians and all of the life of the garden. Larnach Castle Garden has many microclimates, from the flat, sheltered lawns that are surrounded by hedges where cold air rests and frosts are hard, to the north-facing slopes of the South Seas Garden where there is always air movement and cold air, like water, slides downhill.
Last July, the blooms of the mask flower ( Alonsoa meridionalis) danced like scarlet butterflies where they sowed themselves amongst grasses and ferns on a sun-warmed slope.
This short-lived perennial, which grows to 30cm, flowers from midsummer on until cut by frost. It benefits from a tidy up during this time, but if cut back to half will soon grow back and bloom again.
Flowers are off-set by the fingernailsized oval and serrated shining green leaves.
This plant from Chile may not survive cold winters but it can be treated as an annual. Collect the seed in autumn, then sow in spring.
Perhaps up north where there are hotter summers, this Brazilian salvia ( Salvia confertifolia) flowers earlier in the season.
It flowers late down here in Dunedin but we are rewarded with its orange-red flowers from autumn well into the winter. Its numerous long, brown, brick-coloured stems and the calyx are covered in hairs giving the effect of velvet. The many flowers (confertiflora means crowded with flowers), emerge from the calyx in succession.
Up the stem they go, each whirl composed of five or six decorative calyx with protruding corolla, spaced apart from the ones below. It looks like a candelabra primula on a bush.
These stems are held well above the rough-textured, crinkly leaves.
This salvia comes from a country which has a much hotter climate than here, so I have to treat it tenderly.
It is classed as a perennial which forms a woody base. Instead of cutting it back hard like most other perennials, I give it just a light trim in spring, just before it begins to grow.
One year, I whacked it back hard and it got the sulks and took another season to recover. A warm brick wall shelters this salvia from the southerly wind.
In other gardens, the succulent tree aloe ( Aloe arborescens) is a winter delight with its torch-like racemes of red-orange flowers performing bang in the middle of winter.
At 300m in the castle garden, it’s a little cautious, only presenting its cheerful lights in early spring for the bellbirds to sip on its nectar.
My July photograph was taken in my garden at Macandrew Bay at sea level.
The tree aloe, which can grow two to three metres, has a worthy structural presence all year with bold rosettes of succulent, spiny leaves.
In nature, it has a wide range across eastern and southern Africa from sea level to the tops of high mountains, preferring rocky outcrops. Plant in the sun with excellent drainage. ✤