May 2013 Garden News

Winter is very close as we have had some very cool nights.

A lot of the tropical plants including Caladiums and gingers have all died back leaving a lot of empty spaces in the garden although one thing has really surprised me, that is the Cardinal Creeper is still in full flower it’ s usually well and truly finished by now.

Like the weather the garden is never the same any given year.

This time of the year the ruellia’s come into their own, they provide some nice colour in the garden.

A winter job is pruning a lot of the fruit trees, I have just finished cutting back four Carambola trees, three Grumichama’s and four Jaboticaba’s. A very big job, and very hard on my poor right arm that has a bad dose of ‘tennis elbow’ at the moment.

We had members of Jacobs Well Garden Club visit the garden and a bus load from Glebe Garden Club, all enjoyed the garden the only presentation this month was to my Grand Daughters Kindergarten where I presented ‘Adventure in the Garden’.

We have a very nice crop of Monstera’s at the moment; I love them, no wonder it’s called the ‘Fruit Salad Plant’.

Monstera Fruit.

 Tacca 'Black Bat Plant'.

 Staghorn.

 Star Apple Fruit Tree.

Philodendrum Pink Princess.

 Rose 'Candy Corn'.

Ruellia.

I have just finished ‘winterising’ the garden by spreading sugar cane mulch and spraying all the plants with a good dose of kelp.

We have had a few light showers but no rain of note, garden is getting a bit dry and I will soon have to start watering.

 Brazil Cloak.

Impatient 'Congo Cockatoo'.

We are now starting to think about raising some sponsorship money so our eldest son can travel to Italy in August to compete for Australia in the ‘World Disabled Water Ski Championships’. Unfortunately this is only partly sponsored so we have to think of ways to raise some extra money. I have put a photo on so you can see what a hero he is.

April Garden News 2013

April started off with Judy and I going to 'Glebe Garden Club' which is situated just outside of Ipswich.

My presentation was ‘Rare, Beautiful and Bizarre Botanicals, this was the first time I had showed this power point presentation and it was very well received.

My next presentation was to the 'Royal Horticultural Society’ at Cleveland again ’Rare, Beautiful and Bizarre Botanicals’.

It was a Friendship day so members of other clubs were able to see the new presentation.

'Karana Downs Garden Club' visited us and stayed for a full morning, all said they enjoyed the garden.

We went to Rod Patterson’s Open Garden as we like to support him and he always has great plants for sale.

Unfortunately the weather was not kind to Rod as it rained heavily all day Saturday and some of Sunday so his numbers were right down.

Our Superannuation fund visited here to take some publicity photos of Judy and I and how we were managing our finances. It was quite a shoot with a team of six arriving including a makeup lady.

Needless to say I had to powder my nose prior to being photographed; this was defiantly a first for me.

I had my 68 th birthday and had a lovely dinner with all the family.

I travelled up to Toowoomba again for the ANZAC day marching along with a number of ex RAAF ‘Doggies’ Police Dog Handlers, it was a great march and a good chance to catch up with some good friends from the past.

I had my annual medical check up and told the Doctor I had no problems other than working too hard, he said for me to continue doing that.

In the garden.

Putting sugar cane mulch down prior to winter, great stuff and really insulates the soil during the colder months, a number of new plants put in and general maintenance.

With the new swimming pool laws I would of had to cut out most of a nice Lychee tree, so rather than do that I have removed the old fence and a built a new one a metre back, a big job, but what isn't.

The tropical plants are starting to go dormant, plants like caladiums, gingers and hippeastrums are dying back quite quickly now and the pecan nuts are dropping their leaves.

Garden News March 2013

We started off the month with a presentation to the’ Bayside Garden Club’ based in Wynnum then I travelled across the sea all the way to ‘Coochie Mudlo’ Island to give another presentation.

The final presentation for the month was for the ‘Beenleigh Garden Club’.

In between all that we had our charity ‘Open Garden’.

The Lions Club needed to raise $2580 for the ‘Flux posterior walker’, we ended up raising $3344 which gave the Lions Club enough left over to help someone else in need.

 Pictures from our 'Open Garden'

We were disappointed with the numbers as only 330 people attended. We found it was very difficult to get the message across as we were virtually ignored by the major papers and the local paper for Wynnum only has a stamp size article, as usual our local paper ‘Bayside Bulletin’ was very good.

The visitors who came willingly paid the $5 entry, bought a raffle ticket and sat down for refreshments, some even made an extra donation, but most of all everyone left happy.

Special mention to Clair Levander from Radio 4BC’s gardening show, she was a great help and certainly is a worthy successor to the late and great Colin Campbell.

As most gardeners will realise it took a great deal of work to get the garden ready for showing and when we opened the garden looked great, some of the comments from people were fantastic and quite a few visitors had been to the well known Sunnybank Garden a couple of weeks ago and said they enjoyed ours more.

I have pebbled another pathway and started to build another archway across one of the garden tracks.

 Canna edulis

 Euphorbia geroldii

 Caladium

 Caladium

 Justicica

 Toad Lily

 Carphalia

 Costus amazonius

 Aeschynanthus 'Hot Flash'

 Euphorbia trigonia

 Stapelia hirsuta 'Starfish Flower'

 Piper 'Kava'

 Tacca 'White Bat Plant'

Brugmansia

 The evolution of our garden never stops.

I have just finished a third garden presentation called ‘Bizarre and Beautiful Botanicals’, I am very pleased with this and the Garden Clubs should love it. It consists of 220 power point slides of some of the very rare plants we have and some of the most beautiful.

This blog get's over 200 visitors every day with over 72,000 visits, this gives me a real thrill to think so many people from so many different countries have seen our garden.

Don't forget to see my review site found at http://www.gardenproductreviews.com/ I have just done a scathing review of a Hills product and their bad service.