Spring’s the Crown of all the Year
The late spring rains have done wonders for our garden. Our program to drought proof our garden works brilliantly. (See: Practising What I Preach). We harvest, reuse, recycle and drip our water on the gardens.
On Sunday I walked around the garden to smell the roses. The lawns are flourishing. They should. This winter, eldest son Peter rotary hoed the front lawn, we levelled it, top dressed it, manured it and then returfed it. 500 metres of Sir Walter, delivered on a packed semi-trailer with fifty rolls on each pallet, each roll weighing 50 kilos. Peter carried each roll to its spot, Beverley and I unrolled them, joined them, watered them, rolled and cut them. Today the lushest lawns you could imagine.
We have an elevated flower box four metres long full of flowers for the house. The poppies, snap dragons, gerberas, phlox, stocks and zinnias have had it, but the dahlias are shooting everywhere. We have fresh flowers in the house every day. The standard icebergs guard the back door. The Cote Porche through which we drive to enter the property is covered with Albertine climbing roses, the arbours and arches are covered with roses or star jasmine, the pergolas with masses of wisteria.
We have about thirty roses in the rose gardens, standard and bush, and some scramblers along trellis and the front fence. In front of the fence are scores of agapanthus about to bloom, and in front of them the gazanias and lawn. All of the azaleas are past their prime, even the huge standard azalea in the centre of the lawn. The 120 camellias are putting on amazing growth. In front of my work shed are a row of white gardenias backed by a row of forty green and russet nandenas and a row of orange cannas. Gymea lilies and strelitzias will soon surprise us.
There is a rough line of buxus standing at attention waiting for a haircut and later some hedging. Down the drive are the brilliant scarlet hippeastrums, white Christmas lilies and blues roses – quite patriotic as at the end of the drive is the flag pole and the Australian flag in the same colours.
The shade plants, hydrangeas, ferns, stags, bromeliads, hoyas, lilies, irises, are bursting to flower. Creepers and snail and trumpet vines everywhere add colour and shy violets, pansies, petunias and smaller annuals are covered with bees buzzing. One stag on my study wall is well over a metre across. Hanging baskets of ferns and purple nodding violets, and cycads strain their hooks. In the glass house scores of young trees, ferns, and shrubs grown from seed or cuttings are thriving and in the shade house are rows and rows of shrubs, small trees and bonsai on their shelves, with the largest of the palms shading all standing ten metres tall. Across the courtyard from my study a window ledge of African violets are in striking colour.
The dam is full and covered with lotus, whose huge leaves reduce evaporation and whose flowers are so tall and striking. Along the edges are papyrus, water iris, lilies and willows. On the perimeters of our acreage are huge eucalypts of many varieties, perhaps a hundred years old, and beneath them are melaleucas, banksias, grevillea, callistemon, littlipillies, and even the oaks, pines, maples, holly, rhododendrons, magnolias. In the middle of the lavender garden a Norfolk pine stands tall. Coming into flower at the moment are the oleanders, but the acacias and gordonias are past their prime. On the verandas in their tubs and pots are peace lily, fuchias, impatiens, alyssum, petunias, cacti, and annuals.
Into the house daily come our own vegetables and fruit. I had built a series of elevated vegetable boxes twenty years ago on the basis we did not want to be on hands and knees in twenty years time. These have recently been replaced so vegetables require no stooping to plant, weed or pick. Lettuce of many kinds, rhubarb, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, peas, beans, and onions go in and are picked in turn. Next door, also elevated, are the herbs, mint, parsley, rosemary, basil, sage, oregano, and thyme.
Nearby are mounds for cucumber, pumpkin, and the staked tomatoes. I started a new garden for potatoes this year to prove they could grow in shredded paper and chook manure but that was a failure. Got a handful of lovely potatoes but the rest were burnt off – our chooks were too strong I guess.
Fresh fruit is one of the delights of the garden. The citrus garden has a good supply of large orange, mandarin, lemon and lime trees. But in the fruit garden are nashi pears, apples, apricots, figs, mulberry, peaches, mangos, nectarines, persimmons, plums, pecans, lycees, guavas, loquat, macadamias, and bananas. The vines give us grapes and passionfruit, and in four or five terracotta pots are the strawberries.
A good garden attracts the birds (and possums!) Finches, kookaburras, pardalotes, honeyeaters, woodpigeons, magpies, parrots, lorikeets, larks, owls, tawney frogmouths, rosellas, king parrots, cockatoos, corellas, wild duck with their ten offspring, wild teal with their three off spring, the long necked tortoises, fish (perch) in the dam and in the fishpond, chooks in the hen house and chook run, a land mullet or two (their long tails frighten visitors into thinking it is a black snake!) and a silly willy wag-tail who is always defending his territory from that aggressive male who dances towards him in the mirror! Plenty of mulch is heaven for the eight ducks (the drake is currently trying to show off his virility) and for the bush turkey who struts round planning a new home as soon as he finds a new wife.
We have a few focal points in the garden where through the arch or beyond the trellis, or under the pergola, is a huge sandstone pedestal and urn with one giant agave, or a free standing square pot with a prostrate Marj Miller camellia cascading down or at the end of the path between the rose gardens are the two arches and the bench, and behind another sandstone pedestal and large urn containing the miraculous Wollomi pine, so proud of its dinosaur history.
At this time the garden never has looked better. I speak about the garden with some admiration as it is solely the work of my wife Beverley with help from our son Peter who lives with his family nearby and gives us of his horticultural training and experience. I reside in Parliament wrestling with political demons but when I return home, I head for the garden to check the latest changes and to smell the roses.
REV THE HON. DR GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C.