June 2012 Garden News

What a rotten month it has been. I have had the flu and am now in my fourth week of coughing and sneezing and this is just a couple of weeks after having a flu vaccination.

Needless to say not a lot has been done in the garden.

It’s a good job we have not had any bus tours here this month.

I did attend a meeting of the Ipswich Bromeliad Society’ and gave a presentation on ‘Smart Sub Tropical Gardening’.

I have now started to prepare a third presentation ‘Bizarre and Beautiful Botanicals’, I am up to 100 slides already and it’s going to be a very stunning power point.

Our friends John and Genny Catlan are to appear on ‘Gardening Australia’ sometime in August, this will be a very interesting segment.

After seeing John and Genny we called into ‘Greenfingers’ and collected a metre of their great potting mix, also had a look at their premium organic soil, it looked good so I ordered a truck load to be delivered.

I have reviewed their potting mix and premium soil on my review site at http://www.gardenproductreviews.com/

We hope to dig out all our Day Lily’s and put them back into this good soil, that’s if there’s any left as our Grand Children have found the heap and the Tonka trucks ect are having a busy time, that’s ok as children should be allowed to play in the dirt.

We had a trip to Caboolture to see some friends who have a wonderful nursery full of orchids, bromeliads ect.

Not a lot has been done in our garden this month due to sickness although I did manage to spread a couple of metres of crusher dust to build up the pathways.

It is very dull and wet here here, Brisbane is the coldest it has been for 10 years but the winter rain is of course welcome.
We have had 100 mills or four inches during the last week of this month.

Worsleya procera.

Wow, almost at the 20,000 visitor mark from well over 100 different countries.
It's great to see that our garden has been viewed so many times, isn't the wide world web wonderful when we can share our beautiful garden with so many others.
I have just bought the latest issue of 'Sub Tropical Gardening' magazine and note with interest the article on the 'Blue Hippeastrum' or Worsleya procera.

It's a good article but I feel it does not give enough credit to John and Genny Catlan who are perhaps the best growers of this plant in Australia, they have a magnificent collection of both mature and young plants all propagated by John and Genny.
Hopefully Gardening Australia will do a feature on them, they will make for Great Television.
Have a look at my review site.
http://www.gardenproductreviews.com/

May 2012 Garden New's

This month our garden featured on Channel 10s ‘Totally Wild’, they did a great job and we were very pleased with the segment.

You too can see it on this link: http://ten.com.au/totally-wild-tw20-077.htm ,we are on after the lizards.

This month we had the Sunshine Coast fern and Foliage Society visit the garden and then we had a fairly long trip to give a presentation to the Kilcoy Garden Club, they were most hospitable as most country people are and offered us lunch before we left. We just got home in time to watch our garden feature on ‘Totally Wild’.

                                                           Mattress Button Plant

                                                                    Haemanthus alba

                                                                   Curly Poinsettisa

                                                              Mussaenda 'Dona Luz'

We now have a bit of a break until the next garden visit so I have started some serious fruit tree pruning and have stripped a couple of gardens to start afresh.

                                                Sunshine Coast Fern and Foliage Society

Gardening is all about renewal and change and I have been doing quite a bit of that this month with room made for lots of new plants.

I have brought in trailer loads of organic soil, mushi compost and crusher dust to do all the jobs that need doing.

Our first Grand-Daughter turned three and we gave her a very special Birthday, we will soon have three Grand-Daughters and one Grand-Son, they have really changed our lives for the better.

                                                                            Sophie

Friday is our day off gardening as we look after the Grand-Children this day and we find it more tiring than if we had worked all day in the garden.

How did I ever find time to go to work? 

                                                                         Hog Plum

                                                                            Triplaris