December 2012 Garden News

December was all about recovering from the Open Garden.

I think we had the best Open Garden we have ever had, such nice people visited and they bought lots of Judy’s beautiful plants.

We raised $715 for disabled sport and the catering raised almost $2000 for a local food bank.

We will not be opening in 2013, after 11 consecutive openings we feel it’s time to take a break.

The weather since our open garden has been awful with 30 degree plus heat, wind and absolutely no rain until Boxing Day when we had 18 mills.

All our seven tanks are  now completely empty.

It has been a real struggle this year to keep our plants alive; we have to use town water just to keep our plants alive.

 Crinum 'Rose Parade'.

 Curcuma 'White'

Beehive Ginger 'Coffee'

The place is a mess at the moment as the gum trees are shedding their bark and there’s bark everywhere.

I have planted all the new plants we bought on our holidays, there’s always room for more plants.

New Project.

I am building an extension to one of the shade houses at the moment, once that is finished I have to rebuild the oldest shade house as the timber has rotted, it sure is a busy life.

 Lady Slipper Vine.

 Rose Ginger

 Double Abutilon pink

 Caladium 'Thai Beauty'

Costus 'Peru Pineapple'

We attended a couple of Christmas party’s for Bayside Garden Club and the Cordyline Society enjoyed both.

 Crinum 'White'

 Swamp Hibiscus

Christmas lights keep the Flying Foxes away from our Mango crop.

We start the New Year with a presentation to the Tweed Heads garden Club on the 14^th January.

Judy and I hope you all had a great Christmas and have some wonderful gardening for 2013.

Merry Christmas

Judy and I would like to wish all our blog readers a very happy Christmas and all the very best for 2013.
We hope the weather is better than this year as it has only rained twice since mid July and the garden is to say the least "parched'.
I will be putting on another post in the next few days.
All the very best and happy gardening to you all.

November Garden News 2012

We went into November with despair; the weather had been so unkind to us. Just two lots of 2 mills of rain since late July and the winds were the worst in our memory. Judy and I looked at each other and commented that ‘we could just walk away and leave it all'.

All our rainwater tanks (107,500 litres) were empty

On the second week of November we had 30 mills of rain and on the third weekend (this is when we usually have our open garden) we had 51 mills.

We were saved, the garden sparked up like you would not believe, and what a relief not having to water the garden.

I had a garden presentation at ‘Springdale garden club' which was well attended and two presentations for the Cordyline Society’s ‘Tropical Affair’ plant sale.

Thank goodness we opened our garden one week later than usual as the weather could not have been better with a top temperature of 27c and fine.

The ‘Open Garden’ was a success with over 600 people visiting the garden and great plant sales.

The raffle raised over $700 for disabled sport and catering did well for a local food bank.

The main thing that struck me was how nice all the visitors were.

After eleven successive openings we are going to have a break and reassess our situation in 2014.

I already have 11 garden presentations booked for next year and there’s sure to be more including bus trips.

As usual after the opening we head up to Mooloolaba to have a three day rest away from the garden.

We see all our garden friends up there and of course return with a load of new plants, this year I was able to secure some new Costus and Zingibers.

To all my blog readers I wish them all a very happy Christmas and hope that 2013 will be a great year for them in the garden and in life.