#Sasanqua camellia 'Early Pearly'

[ahamiltongarden]

OUT NOW: MEYER LEMONS AND SASANQUA CAMELLIA ‘EARLY PEARLY’

We are coming to the close of autumn. The two oak trees still have many golden yellow and green leaves to shed. We have big white bags of dry leaves lining the studio verandah and they will soon be mulched and put on the garden. Decent rain is coming in a day. The white camellias we planted last year along the driveway are starting to flower. It was quite a battle keeping the bushes alive over the hot dry summer. After flowering, new foliage should take off, aided by some fertiliser, and hopefully next year, there will be a more prolific flowering. The petals of the flowers are thick and waxy. Our Meyer lemon tree outside the kitchen window is laden with young yellow fruit that are too bitter to harvest just yet. The English parsley is starting to flourish in time for soups and parsley sauce. Our grass has at last turned green again, thank goodness, as that swathe unites the whole garden again, and on a beautiful mild sunny day, with white clouds billowing above, and the half tame thrush singing her heart out to gain my attention, makes one feel glad to be alive. I have recently dug up some double pink hellebores and put them in terra cotta pots to see how they flower with a little more attention from me. Potted sweet pea seedlings are coming through and the tulip bulbs lie beneath their covering of potting soil. Pots of grape hyacinths and daffodils are all serried together on the potting table to receive their daily dose of sun. The daphne bushes in the side garden are budding and will start to flower around the first of July, not so far away. Today I cut the old yellowed foliage off the sedums as the new rosettes are breaking through the soil. I am ready for winter.

[ahamiltongarden]

THE GARDEN PEAKS IN NOVEMBER

The long border colour scheme was always pink and yellow and it has taken me more than a decade to get that in place, mainly planting roses and perennials. There is also a lesser palette of chartreuse, vermilion, rust and blue to stop the main scheme being so boringly matched. The hydrangeas in the elm tree garden are budding up nicely and these should be flowering by the end of November. When the long border goes down in early December it will be time to cut much of it back and then the challenge is always how to make this garden work during the hot and dry summer months. I have planted some zinnia seeds and am hoping to place a tall soft mauve cultivar all along the border. The various aster bushes in blue-mauve and pink will rise and flower, along with pink Allium ‘Millennium’, pink phlox, echinacea and white lilies,  The blue salvia will be cut back but it will flower again all autumn if I keep deadheading it. The pink fence roses (’Fantin-Latour’) will not flower again but the foliage of this rose creates a pleasant backdrop in summer and autumn. The two deep blue plumbago towers start flowering in December and these are an important element in the garden during summer and autumn.

The herb garden with the potted bay in the centre is used constantly for cooking. The pyrethrum s flowering, the camomile is rising, as is the dill and newly planted parsley. The marjoram will be harvested soon for drying. The besil is in Danny’s vegetable garden with the tomatoes.

I haven’t shown you the driveway border yet. I planted some white New Guinea impatiens all along it recently between Heuchera ‘Marmalade’. I don't know how they will go with the heat. We will see. The ‘Early Pearly’ (to be espaliered) sasanqua camellias there are starting to sprout new leaves, a sign that they have adapted to their new home. It will take many years for these to make a statement but in gardening one must be patient. 

The gorgeous yellow rose in the first two images is ‘Graham Thomas’, a David Austin rose. At this time of the year most Hamilton (Victoria) gardens, large and small, are looking lovely as many, many citizens here value gardening and understand that gardens bring beauty, contentment and peace to their lives.

[ahamiltongarden]

WHITE ALONG THE DRIVEWAY

This is the first time I have shown you the development of the new driveway garden featured in an earlier post. It still looks very raw but you can see how the different bushes work well together in this first planting. We were going to paint the fence black but decided it would look out of place in relation to the whole rustic mood of the garden. The new white flowered sasanqua ‘Early Pearly’ camellias love the conditions along this space and their branches are perfect for training. I am giving them lots of attention at present with water and fertiliser. It is going to take years to get them spread and fanned along the fence but the effect should be fabulous so I am prepared to wait. Gardeners are very patient people as you well know. The large white flower is an annual New Guinea impatiens that is rather sensitive to sunlight. It is only getting going now that the weather has turned hot. The yellow-green Heuchera ‘Marmalade’ bushes along the driveway are growing particularly well as they love this position of part sun- part shade. The line of box balls I grew and trained myself add some solidity to the driveway scheme and link the front and back boxwood schemes.

The cute new white plant stand on the little side verandah was made to measure by my step father. He copied the design from a photograph of a very expensive one that was in an old copy of English ‘House and Garden’. I have already set up a few pots of very young white and pink geraniums on it. They will love the morning sun and sheltered position but I will have to watch them carefully for grub damage and probably will spray to deter them.

[ahamiltongarden]

THINKING ABOUT THE DRIVEWAY GARDEN

The driveway garden runs south to north and is opposite the east side of the house in shade, semi shade and part sun in the afternoon, so I have to find tough and drought tolerant plants to suit these conditions. When I was less experienced and rather foolish I used to force plants (roses) to survive in situations they were not comfortable in to realise my vision, but my experienced elderly neighbour Irene taught me that the plant must suit the situation and soil above all if it is to do well. Our soil is loam with a clay sub soil, with varied Ph readings between acid and neutral. The driveway originally had an old viburnum hedge growing along it and it was lovely but it had grown so big we could not fit our new SUV along the drive without it getting scratched. So it was taken out two years ago now and we have left the soil fallow for two seasons to kill anything that grew back from the culling. It is now ready to plant. I have raked Dynamic lifter through the soil and will add some compost when I plant the new scheme. I asked Irene what plant might suit the driveway scheme and she immediately said sasanqua camellias as she has them growing in the same kind of position. I trust her judgement.

The above photographs are not the best as they were downloaded from elsewhere, including from the Post Office Nursery, the hellebore specialists but they serve to convey an impression of the proposed planting. We have already planted eight box balls along the long and thin driveway garden and have ordered the eight ‘Early Pearly’ sasanqua camellias to go in-between these. I have dug the holes for these and the recent rain has made them moist for planting. The one metre high camellias will be espaliered on wires and in time will grow several metres tall and wide and cover most of the paling fence area. I want to plant 16 hellebore plants next (two between each ball) and will visit the Post Office Nursery in Woodend to buy them as they have all the different cultivars and styles on hand in differing sizes. They will self seed in time. I am thinking of using double hellebores as I have singles in the side garden. To use all white with the white camellias might be too bland, so I might mix some yellow and pale pink in too to have more variety for cutting. The darker black hellebores are lovely but in a scheme they don't read well. I am also thinking of underplanting with black miniature mondo grass for contrast and cyclamen hederifolium, the tiny miniature cyclamen that self seeds and naturalises, for a different size scale. I would also like to plant some miniature white daffodils, crocus and muscari in the sunnier sections of the garden. The thicker leaves of the camellia bushes will be in keeping with the equally thick hellebore foliage, so the two feel right together.

So, for autumn to spring would be the white camellias, the hellebores would flower from July to September, the cyclamen during winter, the muscari, daffodils and crocus late winter to spring. For November into December I could have some white liliium longiflorum, or Asiatic lilies in pink and yellow and white. I need something along there for January, February and March and at the moment think Japanese anemones would be good in pale pink and white for February into March. For January I might just use an annual plant for semi shade with white flowers. It is one thing to design on paper, but another for the plan to work physically in the set conditions. We will see how it goes.

[ahamiltongarden]

EIGHT ‘EARLY PEARLY’ CAMELLIAS FOR ESPALIERING ALONG OUR DRIVEWAY NOW A REALITY

Today we drove to Ballarat to pick up our sasanqua camellias. They just fitted into the back of our SUV.

It is all very well designing a garden on paper but the reality of procuring the exact material in country Victoria is another thing. I have had difficulty locating eight bushes all the same at the one garden centre and was loathe to collect them from different places in case there were growth differences in the plants. One nursery let me down (not in Hamilton) and strung me along until I finally cancelled the order. I looked up online mail order camellia nurseries in Australia but the specimens were always too small or the nurseries too far away. Also I was aware that ‘Early Pearly’ is an older cultivar and many other newer cultivars such as pink and white ‘Sweet Jane’ (which I find too pretty), and so on, are what people seem to want. I needed a white semi formal camellia, with pink buds and beautiful dark pointed leaves that would cope with wind, shade, semi-shade and full sun, that was only around two to three metres in height.

Despondent, I began to think I would have to wait until next year, and order them in advance. My plans for the backbone of the driveway garden scheme seemed to come to nothing, and I couldn’t plant anything else until those camellias were in and the wires in place. The holes for the camellias were dug a month ago. Finally, I rang Grow Master in Ballarat and they had the quantity I needed and more (20) so I secured them straight away and paid in advance. I do find that nursery very professional to deal with. The plants are always more expensive than other nurseries, but the quality is there, which is the most important thing. Our eight new bushes have had their flowering and are starting to produce new growth and leaves so it is a good time to plant them. I am looking at them now sitting together on the studio verandah and will have them in the ground very soon!