March 2014 Garden News

The first gardening presentation for the month was to the Clairmont Garden Club situated at Park Ridge, and then we had a bus load from the Gold Coast Rose Society and finally a presentation to the Maleny Garden Club.

On our way to Maleny everything was brown, not a blade of green grass anywhere, we start climbing towards Maleny and everything suddenly turns green, wow what a sight for sore eyes.

The presentation went very well, the members were very friendly and said my presentation was the best they have had, which was very nice.

We left Maleny Garden Club and were nearly wiped out by an oncoming vehicle whose back wheels lost traction and headed towards us, fortunately it was a near miss and we escaped unscathed.

We then headed to see Maureen Simons at Mt Towen Tropicals to (yes, you guessed it) to buy some more gingers and Heliconia’s.

What a busy month it has been with lots of new work done in the garden, first job was to dig all the Day Lilys out then remove all the old soil and replace with new, then replant the Day Lilys.

My second major job was to pull apart the ‘Caladium Corner’ and completely start again and making it much bigger and tidier, this involved taking out all the old pavers, rocks and sleepers making the pathway longer and putting pebbles in.

I then replaced some of the rocks and sleepers making the ground level much higher and level, pointed between the rocks and then filling up with soil.

I had just finished replacing all the rocks in the garden pathways (1000s) raising them up and making them straight and building up the soil behind them.

I have now started another project, but that can wait to April’s blog post.

Up to the 25^th March we were dry with virtually NO summer rain, well we finally received 100 mills which was most welcome, we finally have some water in our tanks, not full but great anyway. Now we are just hoping for some follow up rain.

It truly amazes me how quickly plants adapt after rain the grass is green and growing and the garden plants are looking healthier than they have done for the past eight months.

I have done quite a bit of replanting in the garden and hopefully with a little rain in the spring the garden will look great for our opening.

The last eight months has been a very stressful time with rain coming only three times.