My tree

Dozen for Diana 2

The tree my heart would choose is a ginkgo, with golden maidenhair fern shaped leaves. A silver birch. A Japanese maple from denisenoniwa. A copper beech or a smokebush. A coveted Californian manzanita from drystonegarden.  James a ‘New American’ gardener is networking his Brooklyn garden and has chosen Sunburst honey locust Gleditsia triacanthos.  For the first round of Dozen for Diana, the tree I chose was Trimeria.   

Looking at Rest and Be Thankful from the verandah
3 witkaree in the front row, bergkaree behind the bench

We have gardened here for four years. A better choice for our garden, would be the olive trees we planted at the roadside entrance. Watered thru the first few summers, a promising crop is developing for this year.

We are trying to grow a bower
at Rest and Be Thankful

Your garden, to be worthy of the title, will have a tree to sit under. Might also be a carefully choreographed shrub.  The garden framework, structure, shelter, carbon footprint, the put something back. We chose this plot for the thirty year old pair of mountain ash trees. Not indigenous. Those fresh green leaves are turning golden and crunching underfoot. We also inherited apples, figs and plums, an Australian brush cherry and Pride of India.

Step down into Rest and Be Thankful

Look back at your photos taken two or three years ago, and see for yourself just how quickly trees do grow! Rest and Be Thankful planted in December 2007, then just a year later!  

Witkaree - Searsia lancea
The leaves form King Neptune's trident

Looking at our garden today, high summer, our best choice is the karee. Searsia, once was Rhus. Seen growing in the Karoo, as a winding line of green. Roots reaching down to the hidden water below a dry riverbed. (Found from Zambia to the Western Cape, avoiding sub-tropical KZN). We have white karee Searsia lancea. Learnt later that they should grow with a multiple trunk, not as a tidy lollipop on a stick.

Bergkaree - Searsia leptodictya
The leaves from a perfect T.

I prefer the mountain karee Searsia leptodictya. Grows more slowly in our garden. (Comes from the four Northern provinces and Zimbabwe and Mozambique). Has a graceful arching habit like the willow, hugging you in a guardian angel’s wings. With inviting corky bark. Male and female trees, if you are lucky there will be tiny berries for the birds.

Sit on the bench with me
look back to the house for scale

My garden has a mediterranean climate, in Africa. Long hot summer. Second we can have a deluge in winter, on clay soil.   First of this year’s Dozen was my new signature plant blue sage in January.

Or at Black Stork Island and the waterlily 

Return with me to your imaginary empty small garden.

1. Revitalise the view from a window?

2. Choose plants that you know will grow happily in your climate and soil! I have 12, you?  

3. I lean to indigenous/native for wildlife, but there are roses here too.

4. Colour, scent, texture or interest - so we see a garden.

Dozen for Diana has
a signature plant and a tree

You may have one tree. For this Dozen for Diana meme. (Make your choices each month, or as and when life allows). What do you love? Or what do you PLAN to add, because you see it flourishing in your neighbourhood. Leave a comment with a link. You are welcome to bring an archived post. Or write a fresh post for your new tree.    

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Donna of Gardens Eye View near Oneida Lake in NY has chosen spring's Trout Lily in her native yellow.

Pam's English Cottage Garden in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania chooses Echinacea, which I saw growing in the Apothecary garden at Ballenberg.

The Sage Butterfly gardens on the East coast of the USA, where she remembers June and her daylily.

Bridget lives sustainably on 3 acres in Ireland's Arigna Valley. She reminds us of the old wives remedy, now called aspirin. In Praise of Willow.

Deborah poised between her forever garden KilbourneGrove in Ontario and life in Barbados, has chosen a white Cornus kousa.

Christine shares my climate but in a gentler kinder shady setting.  Her choice is a variegated  Pittosporum eugenioides to lighten the 'darkness'.

To Cindy of  EnclosureTakeRefuge in Rwanda for an exotic Mussaenda shrub, pleated leaves and glowing bronze star flowers.

In London Laura is helping a friend, where the winter scent of a sweetbox is trapped in the PatioPatch Courtyard-Garden.

VioletFern lives near the St. Lawrence River in upstate NY. She is turning her bleah lawn into a habitat garden that teems with nature. Her choice is wild roses for the leafcutter bees, with hips for the robins. 

Pictures and words by Diana of  Elephant's Eye 

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, near Cape Town in South Africa

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. Those are my links.)