Yes, it’s a gardening post again!
I was looking through some of the gardening posts here and I fell on a post from January last year in which I explained how I designed and created my Southern border and was absolutely surprised at the change that has happened in just a year!
Just like your children growing, you don’t really notice the changes as you are with them almost every day of your life, but you are smacked into reality when you come across pictures of them even just 6 months ago. When they say that they grow in a blink of an eye, I think every parent would agree with me that even 17 years is a very short time as you remember the moment of their birth etc.
Gardening is like that too. It requires a lot of patience for things to grow, change and mature.
Case in point, have a look at these pictures, the first was taken on 18 Jan, ’06, and the other was shot just an hour ago:
Aren’t the changes amazing? And it’s not a mature garden by far!
Comments
What you say is so true. Gardening takes patience and with it, nothing is instant gratification. It’s also hard to see the changes unless you look at pictures then and now.
Your garden continues to grow more beautiful every time you take a picture Mahmood. It is fabulous to come across avid gardeners from outside of the US, Europe, and New Zealand (these areas are places which have gardeners I’ve interacted with).
By the way, in the left foreground, is that iceplant (carpobrotus) I see? If it is, we consider that plant a pest here. It covers most of the dunes, choking out the native dune plants. The flowers are pretty (yellow an purple), but the best kind is the very small leaved type which is far better behaved is lampranthus, leaves only about a centimeter long. In a nearby coastal town, when the plants flower, the plants are covered in bright magenta flowers which look as if someone flooded the areas with paint.
Thank you Barry, I’m just starting with gardening and there is an awful lot for me to learn, patience IS one of them, ask my wife! She continues to tease me that I want an “instant” border or garden! I’m beginning to understand what she means… sometimes I just want to run and get on with it!
The plant you mean is actually Sweet Allysum. They emit the most gorgeous honey smell when they flower, I’ve got them planted in various spots in the borders and they add a good depth, especially when they spill over the path a bit.
I must admit that I’ve got mad with them a bit, as I realised my success in planting them from seed, I also planted the yellow and purple varieties in other places. Those have all germinated now, so I’m looking forward to more floods of colour around the garden.
Sorry Barry! You’ve got a sharp eye and I’ve just lookup up “carpobrotus” (see what I mean about patience?)
The answer is yes, it is. I’ve got Carpobrutus in this location and also around one palm tree. I’ve never seen them flower yet. I keep the growth in check, as it goes crazy in the summer!
You know Mahmood, what is a jewel to one gardener is a weed or common to another. Carpobrotus is considered weedy, and I’m not a fan of its coarseness (I should take pictures of the huge mats covering the sand dunes here), but a friend’s mother from Minnesota thought it was prettier than the native plants. Sweet alyssum is so common that it’s a weed here as well (although it’s easy to pull). We get both white and purple forms. It can be quite pretty massed though.
The carpobrotus we have are C. edulis and C. chilensis. There is dispute over whether C. chilensis (from Chile) is actually native here or not. Apparently in an ancient saline lake right behind the dunes here, they’ve found its pollen). It also seems to form small rounded mats, unlike C. edulis which just spreads. C. chilensis has shorter, rounder tipped, blue green leaves and purple flowers. C. edulis has longer, sharper pointed leaves and yellow flowers. They can be eaten and deer love them, spreading seeds about.
I wonder if yours isn’t flowering due to the heat and general year round warmth? Both the cape and here in California it cools down at least part of the year.
Barry you’re a wealth of information! I so enjoy reading your comments as they always add to my knowledge. Thanks again my friend.
If and when they do flower I’ll be sure to post a picture or two.
In the last garden show in Bahrain I’ve seen pictures of it spreading over long swathes of beach on Australia on the Australian stand. I’ve not seen it natively here so far.
I checked this afternoon and I only have them around a single palm tree, they do add a very nice texture to that area, but they’re starting to crawl out and they need chopped a bit. I’ll do that tomorrow.