A Swartland garden in September

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

The ash trees are in full ruffled petticoat ball gowns. Morning after the ball, I pick up fallen flounces. Trim as Prince Charles at Highgrove said - send the cows into the park, the trees need trimming. I stretch my arms wide ... and trim to shoulder height. Our maids of the forest have changed from gold flashes on lime to a clear crisp apple green. The plums are veiled in blossom like brides. Tree following.

Ash and plum trees with lavender

Going into October when the roses are at their best, the bushes are covered in lush foliage and enjoying the wood ash. Papa Meilland, Anna's Red, Great North and Pearl of Bedfordview are blooming already. Frilly bearded yellow iris is from my mother's gardening friend Celeste. When we asked the nursery for water plants for our new pond, they sold us a yellow iris. I've since sadly discovered it is an invasive alien - seek and destroy.

Anna's Red, yellow pond iris, Great North
Celeste's yellow iris, Pearl of Bedfordview

Flowers leave some of their perfume on the hands that give them. Cattleya Platinum came to me as a gift. The garden posy is ringed with minty Pelargonium tometosum leaves, and a new friend went home like a bride, bouquet in hand!

Cattleya Platinum and garden posy

We visited our False Bay garden which has the green glooms, but if I collage together the foreign flowers ... Cream and white Coprosma Marble Queen from New Zealand reminds me of my father, compensates for the felled pohutakawa, lightens the gloom. Pink flowers are Indian hawthorn which could be topiaried, and would still be covered in flowers. On the verge our tenant has planted poppies for colour. Flanders red (with bee, a token of gardening for biodiversity) and Californian orange!

Indian hawthorn, Coprosma
False Bay planted poppies 

This cool September morning a large cabbage white butterfly was quietly waiting among garlic buchu flowers for the sun to return and thaw him out before he nibbles nasturtiums. Turning to our own indigenous wildflowers (mostly with bits potted to go with us) as they grow in my garden for Wildflower Wednesday.

Large cabbage white butterfly

On the Karoo Koppie a huge Euphorbia mauritanica has flowers in lime, green, gold, turning to bronze. Purple vygie. A golden spekboom. Cotyledon orbiculata has large round green leaves and tall spikes of burnt orange flowers for the sunbirds.

Euphorbia mauritanica, purple vygie
golden spekboom. Cotyledon orbiculata
on our Karoo Koppie

Sand lilies  with frilled leaves and dusky pink flowers. Albuca delicately marked in apple green and cream like a snowdrop. Lavender Tulbaghia. Delicate blue stars of Romulea tabularis (seen at Darling). Lachenalia in a gentle range of pastels, violet, yellow, white and green. Large white trumpets on the arum, and smaller ones on the Freesia.

Albuca, Tulbaghia, Veltheimia
Romulea, Lachenalia
Freesia
Zantedeschia, Lachenalia, Albuca 

White velvet of flowers on the garlic buchu. Understated mauve Hibiscus pedunculatus from Knysna. Melianthus major blooms in burgundy against the silver leaves of Mediterranean Dusty Miller. Pelargonium tomentosum dances its tiny white flowers high above the leaves on the south-facing shady side of the house. Rusty orange flowers on strandsalie. Fragile pink and loud red pelargoniums. Mauve wild sage.

Garlic buchu, Hibiscus, Melianthus, peppermint pelargonium
strandsalie
pelargoniums and wild sage

Little butterfly wings on the Natal Bauhinia. Mauve Scabiosa. 

Bauhinia, Scabiosa
Corycium

Pink and white Dimorphotheca jucunda against a Santolina border. Cream Gazania. Purple geometric spires of Plectranthus neochilus. Sunshine yellow Euryops. Strelitzia reginae in both the traditional orange and Mandela's Gold.

Dimorphotheca, Gazania, Plectranthus
Euryops, Mandela's Gold
Strelitzia

Pictures by Diana Studer of  Elephant's Eye
(in Porterville, near Cape Town in South Africa)

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