Our garden year begins in March

Once when Ernst van Jaarsveld was asked about Mandela’s Gold, he gently told us the shiny new varieties are always less vigorous than the true species. So our sky blue and white Plumbago are covered with a best ever display of flowers, while the Royal Cape is different, both in colour and exuberance. The yellow Tecoma is lovely, while Big Red is always thirsty and then a bit miserly with his flowers - and I don’t see our sunbirds nectaring on him.

Plumbago in sky blue and white

The original red Pelargonium among the Autumn Fire red roses needs hard pruning. But the cuttings I harvested and planted last August across Indian Summer are providing eye-popping colour.

Red pelargoniums

The roses turn their faces from summer’s semi-dormancy to bunches of wine-red let’s do it leaves and proper flowers. I’m deadheading to keep them tidy, and encourage those flowers. A few have slipped away. I will fill the gaps with the indigenous plants which are changing the maturing character of Paradise (and Roses).

Pearl of Bedfordview, Papa Meilland, Alec's Red
Anna's Red
Perfume Passion, Chaim Soutine

The Kei apples Dovyalis caffra keep on giving. At the Harvest Festival last Sunday a fruit farmer explained that winter was cold – as they need it, spring brought enough rain – not the too much of the previous 2 years. (November and December we had the farm labourer strikes). It has been a good harvest.

Melianthus seedhead, pink Pelargonium
Tecoma, Kei apple

Phyllis van Heerden X Ruttyruspolia

For Wildflower Wednesday I focus the camera on the flowers and colour, but our garden is predominantly about green leaves, structure and texture. The velvety grey of camphor bush Tarchonanthus camphoratus leaves against the clear apple green of Tecoma, lit by its yellow flowers.

Camphor bush with Tecoma

It is a bitter-sweet pleasure to groom the garden towards its future owners. To rediscover and whittle free the design we planned. We had planted 6 granadillas around the verandah. There is an exterior light at each corner of the house. That corner, where it matters most, was always enveloped in a (whining from me) mat of excess leaves. So I pruned hard. Very hard! The look of shock horror what have you done on his face, matched mine when he cut down all the tall wild oats. It is the way it should be now.

Looking across Ungardening Pond before
looking out from the living room after
Our verandah at Elephant's Eye 

I have gathered the posts about our garden, month by month, under the tab Garden Year. It is not a detailed or comprehensive record – I aim at what you might notice if we walked thru my garden together.

Amaryllis belladonna March lilies in 2014

Pictures by Diana and Jurg Studer
text by Diana Studer
AKA 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)