You Are What You Plant

It's often been mentioned, and now proved, that there is a high correlation between the features of dog owners and their pets. Think it's all delusional bunk? Well, after visiting this site you'll realise that the folklore is far more believable than first expected.

Which got me thinking. How similar are gardeners to their favourite plants? Are they like 'peas in a pod'? (Pun totally intended!) Would you walk around the garden admiring the flowers and saying things like.."Oh, that rose looks just like Aunty Jean" or "this hibiscus bloom reminds me so much of my neighbours accented jowels". Possibly not.

So I decided to *scientifically* observe some gardeners and marry their facial features up with their favourite plants. And what better place to start than by using some of the top users of Blotanical. It made sense because here we had pictures of each gardener plus I could view their favourite flowers in their Plot.

Then it just became a mere routine to match them up with their favourite blooms.

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Converting Unused Space Into A Practical Greenhouse

Ever since I began gardening I've had this nagging desire to have my own greenhouse. A place that was dedicated purely for propagating plants and storing them in some form of recognizable arrangement. Yet I've never had the chance, or the space, to construct one.

Even with our smallish suburban plot I found I was once again limited to making compromises. However, this time I was committed to seeing the 'half-full glass' rather than the 'half-empty' one.

And, Voila! Here is the logical outcome.

This is the side of my shed. Not any side, mind you, but a North-facing side - very important for us southern hemispherean gardeners! It's main purpose is to keep the other 3 side walls erect (and gives somewhere for the roof to hang on to as well). Apart from that, it's just a thoroughfare for the wood pile at the rear.

Look closer and you'll begin to be inspired by the possibilities. Here is a wall pleading to be utilised and so I consented by erecting some framework for future shelving.

What about the cover, I hear you ask? Well, here is the genius... One of the problems with our climate is that in summer it gets far too hot for far too long. So I couldn't just construct a standard greenhouse or all the plants would sizzle in summer and die. Therefore I needed another option and it came quite suddenly and somewhat divinely - in other words I can't remember how I came up with it!

I plan to have two types of cover - clear plastic sheeting for the cooler months and UV-resistant shade cloth for the warmer ones. Both of them will be made as single, continuous sheets that can be taken off and put back on again.

Here's how they will be attached;

1. Steel REO bars - approximately 2m long - will be concreted 500mm into the ground opposite the shed wall and on the other side of the 2m wide path. They will be spaced out at 1m intervals requiring 6 for my 5m long shed.
2. Channels will be sown into both the clear sheeting and the shade cloth at similar intervals wide enough for 20mm PVC pipe to travel through - much like a tent would work.
3. Then brackets will be attached to the roofline at the same width intervals and will hold the PVC piping.
4. Once these things are in place it's simply a matter of pushing the PVC piping through the channels on the cover and placing one end through the roof brackets and the other over the vertical REO bar. This will create a half-dome effect.
5. As the seasons switch the covers can be interchanged to turn the greenhouse into a shadehouse and vice versa.

It's a very simple system but will provide me with the space to grow a quantity of plants both for use in the garden and also for experimentation. I'll keep you updated with progress photos.

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Caring Your Bougainvillea

Caring for my bougainvillea has been a journey in foolishness right from the start. In essence it was more about my lack of respect for this plant that almost bought it undone.

My disrespect for bougainvillea began as a result of myths I had heard from other gardeners. Their 'wisdom' expressed that these plants needed very little to care to help them grow and once in the ground would virtually look after themselves. Their comments were partly right, but there are a heap of things that gardeners can do wrong to ensure these plants won't succeed.

Our faux pas was to plant it at the same time as many other plants in our new garden bed. I had trellised some wire along the fence to give it some support - which was good - but then inadvertently planted some faster growing plants in front of it.

It wasn't until our front garden makeover that we discovered this plant even existed having not seen it for nearly two years. The amazing thing about this bougainvillea was that while it had been ignored, hidden and competed against, it still survived. Sure, it didn't grow and it never flowered - but it was still alive.

So, this season I decided to ensure that this battler of the warmer climate garden was permitted its far share of growing opportunities. And it has not let me down. At the beginning of spring, some five months prior, it weighed in at a little taller than 60cm. Today, it has surpassed the top of the 6ft fence and has branched out along some of the trellis wire. Plus, it is even flowering.

And not to get too confused with the semantics, the bougainvillea picture above is not of its flower. Its merely the colourful bracts that we all admire. The flower is hidden inside and is quite small and insignificant.

So, what changed in the care that I gave this plant that allowed it to succeed?

1. It started to get some light - the lack of sunlight is the reason most gardeners never enjoy the colourful bracts flourishing on the bougainvillea. If yours, and this one wasn't, isn't getting at least 6-8 hours of sunlight per day then forget ever seeing colour on this climber. Cut away competing branches to let some light in or move your bougainvillea if you must.
2. I removed its competition - while bougainvillea is a fast-growing climber, it will struggle to get the water and nutrients needed if planted with other vigorous fast-growers. If similar speedy plants are grown near it you will need to ensure that top-ups of soluble fertiliser and required water is added.
3. I changed my attitude - caring for a bougainvillea wasn't high on my list of things to achieve in the garden. I expected that once it was planted it would take care of itself. And while that is predominantly true, I have had far more success this season while nurturing it than in the past couple of ignoring it.

While I failed to care for this bougainvillea in its early life - and had there been a Department for Plant Cruelty I'd be punished severely - it has been most forgiving. I look forward to sharing more pictures with you in the coming years - and maybe a story of how it took my appreciation for granted and took over the garden completely! Who knows?

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100 Plants Which Every Garden Should Have

Val Bourne from the UK's Telegraph has boldly gone where no other garden journalist would dare tread - creating her list of the Top 100 Plants Every Garden Should Have. The reason it's bold; a list of must-haves is incredibly biased to personal choice. Not to mention that many of these plants aren't available for most of the world's gardeners or they won't grow outside of the UK's climate.

All that aside, this is a great list and if you've some spare time to indulge in a little garden porn then flicking through the gallery of each plant is worth your while.

Val has broken the Top 100 down for each season. Eryngium giganteum, Knautia macedonica and Astrantia major 'Roma' for the summer garden while Galanthus 'S. Arnott' and Perovskia atriplicifolia 'Blue Spire' will brighten your winter blues. Not to mention 25 must-haves for both Spring and Autumn this list of 100 is sheer delight.

BTW - just for the record, of the 100 plants Val listed I only have a solitary 1 growing in my garden - Gaura lindheimeri. I feel so inadequate (sniff!..)

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Your Wild Bird Feeders Are Making a Difference

Most gardeners install bird feeders for the sheer pleasure of having wild birds enjoy their gardens. We plant bird-friendly plants, keep cats and other nuisance pets locked up and even make the effort to keep trees in our gardens for them to keep out of harms way.

Yet it appears that by installing wild bird feeders in our yards is having an even greater impact than we first assumed. It is, in fact, giving them a greater chance of survival.

Sure, this may seem an elementary observation. Of course feeding birds is going to help their chances of survival! Duh! However, for reasons that we may not initially contemplate, feeding wild birds is helping them breed better as well.

This article reporting on research from the University of Exeter clearly demonstrated that birds that are fed throughout the winter months are more likely to lay earlier - and lay more. It also showed that the parent birds were more robust and able to deal with their fledgling chicks.

However, calls from the other side of the equation remind us that this could be a problematic practice. Fears are held that migratory birds will face increasing competition from winter-fed wild birds. But this very argument seems more like the 'playing of God' than real concern for either bird camp. Which one should have the upper-hand? The migratory birds who've just enjoyed their sojourn in warmer climes feeding their faces on plentiful food supplies or those who stuck around scavenging for a morsel to remain alive?

Needless to say, while many have argued that bird feeders are ruining wild birds from their normal hunting, it now appears that we are helping them survive. And this is a good thing.

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Hydrangea flowers are our soil's litmus paper

When we talk about hydrangea flowers which part of these extraordinary blooms are we referring to? Do we mean the large ball shaped flower seemingly suspended about a salutary bunch of offset leaves? Or, are we suggesting the individual colourful bracts that make up the whole?

Actually, hydrangea flowers are neither the massive dome-shaped bloom or the bracts that make it up. No. hydrangea flowers are the minutiae encased within the tonal bracts. But let's not be semantical!

So for this post we're going to take the view that hydrangea flowers are the dome-shaped blooms that catch our eye the moment they unfurl. And for the most part we're going to be looking at why their colours differ so vastly even when they are grown on the same bush in the same location.

H.macrophylla is the most common of the hydrangeas - probably the one your grandmother grew in her garden. It's responsible for many cultivars and differ in flower colour from heavily pigmented blues to pinks and reds and every shade in between. The bushes, mostly grown as perennial shrubs, can also range in size from 1-3m in height and similar width dimensions.

What I like most about hydrangea flowers is their ability to change colour. While a chameleon will change colour to fit in to its current habitat, hydrangea blooms change colour because of their habitat - namely their soil pH.

We've all heard the legend that adding some rusty nails to the soil surrounding your hydrangea will turn the blooms blue. In effect, this is quite possible as the rusty metal will increase the soil's acidity and alter the hue of the blooms. However, I'm not sure that putting rusty nails into the garden is a positive enhancement. It's great if you know exactly where they're located and how many you emptied into your garden. It would be disastrous for your children to find them before you did - and they found them in the bottom of their little feet!

Rusty nails aside, there are ways to alter the colour of your hydrangeas and this is where they become the litmus paper for your garden. Ours, for example, is delightfully pink - the colour demonstrating an alkaline soil - and it makes sense because our rhododendron planted next to it is struggling (R.'s appreciate slightly acidic soils).

Changing Hydrangea colour Pink!
If you're blooms are mostly blue and you'd like a change then the goal is to alter the pH of your soil. Note: achieving this in containers is far simpler than trying to make this happen in your garden soil - but it's still very possible.

Raising the pH level means adding lime - dolomitic lime to be exact. A few handfuls over the soil surrounding your plant every 3-4 months should ensure that the pH balance raise beyond 6-6.5. If your soil is a clay-based loam you may find that every 6 months is more appropriate and for sandy soils possibly every 2-3 months.

Changing Hydrangea colour Blue!
Blue hydrangea flowers are the seemingly be-all-and-end-all of the bloom colours. Our desires far more favour trying to reach this colour than the pink. Fortunately it's just as easy to achieve, but again you'll have more success in a container than your own garden soil.

To increase the acidity of your soil in favour of blue flowers you will need to add some aluminium sulphate. It's not a hard trace element to get hold of and most nurseries would stock it. The application would be as per the producers directions but usually a teaspoon or two in a 9l watering can would suffice. This is then applied to the plant during its growing season.

If your soil is as alkaline as mine then you might want to consider beefing it up with some home-made compost well before the season starts. Even mulching your hydrangeas with lawn clippings would be a helpful practice.

If you're looking for more resources on hydrangeas and how to change their colour try this site.

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A Challenge to the Gardening Blogging Community

Bloomingwriter's blogger, jodi DeLong, issued a challenge to the gardening blogging community to show where they are on the world's stage. Well, here I am in beautiful Busselton, Western Australia.

Busselton is a coastal town 220km south of WA's capital city Perth. With a mere 24,000 residents it's not exactly your bustling metropolis. But it does cater for most things and if we can't get it here, then Bunbury, a short 52kms north, makes up the difference.

For climate and gardening conditions, Busselton is second to none. Even with Austin's 18 garden bloggers they still fall far short of our blog per capita ratio of 1:24000 (Austin's is more like 1:83000) which proves that we are far more into gardening than this US city would let on.

Basically, Busselton is built on a flood plain 2m above sea level. The hills that surround it provide the necessary water for many of our low-lying wetlands and is diverted away from the town through a flood-mitigation program. Much of the water runoff also leeches into the soil and refills our vast Yarragadee Aquifier. This aquifer is the source of all our water consumption.

The town's history was born through the shipping of timber from Geographe Bay. While the bay is a safe harbour it's very shallow and required the building of an almost 2km long jetty. Shipping ceased soon after Cyclone Alby tore through the region in the early 1970's and the jetty has now become a tourist attraction and the source of much contention to who will foot the bill for maintenance.

Chookie from Chookie's Backyard asked about info relating to our founding 'amateur botanist' Georgianna Molloy. While there's much written about this great pioneer you will get a very different story about her from many people who live in Busselton. Whereas she should have been honoured for her gardening work she is reasonably vilified for introducing the arum lily to our moist wetlands. All because she thought they looked wonderful in her English garden back home.

Gardening in Busselton is not as easy as it seems though. Sandy soils that leech nutrients faster than a greyhound on race day and soil alkalinity from the ocean's salt, take their toll. But once the soil's been built up with rich humus there's not a lot that won't grow in this environment. Hot summers reaching into the mid 30's C and mild winters with minimum's still above 0° C ensure gardeners don't give up easily.

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