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Experienced gardeners are well aware of this reality and have even come to enjoy the ephemeral nature of their outdoor spaces.
gardening experts
Amsonia Tabernaemontana, also known as Bluestars can be a beautiful flowering plant addition to just about any garden. They do contain a milky sap that can be toxic and irritating to humans, but otherwise get along well with many other plants within your garden.Gardens are a peaceful sanctuary for most, offering a litany of calming colors, shapes, and textures. Nothing is quite as calming as Amsonia plants, with their quaint, soft blue star-shaped flowers. Aptly called Bluestars, these dainty blooms sit atop long stems in fluffy clusters, adding a peaceful airiness to your landscape. When these flowers pop up in late spring, your garden will be treated with the truest of calming blues. Spring isn’t the only time this stunning plant shows off though, adding interest to your garden throughout the year. Amsonia’s graceful foliage is bright green throughout the blooming season, offsetting its lovely blue flowers. As the months grow colder, the foliage fades into a brilliant golden yellow, ensuring your garden sanctuary stays in tune with the fall mood. On top of all these benefits, Bluestars are an incredibly easy plant to care for. This of course only adds to its peaceful nature and makes it an ideal plant for all types of gardeners. They look most at home in cottage-style gardens but will work in most garden settings, adding its dust of peace no matter where it’s planted. Amsonia plants are named after renowned English physician Dr. John Amson. He settled in Virginia during the mid-1700s and later befriended the distinguished British botanist John Clayton. Clayton was most famous for his works on New World flora and for naming this genus after his friend. The genus is made up of a variety of species, with many only being discovered in the 20th century. Some varieties have even been discovered in eastern Asia and the Mediterranean. Amsonia tabernaemontana is the most common in North America, growing natively along the edges of wetlands and across forest floors. One of the most recent discoveries is the A. hubrichtii, which was first discovered in 1942 and named after its finder, Leslie Hurbicht. No matter the variety and the slight differences each holds, Amsonias make a great accent plant and are favorites for cottage-style gardens. Their soft blue flowers make spring feel even fresher, while its changing foliage keeps up with the ever-changing seasons. Amsonias are non-invasive and attract a wonderful amount of butterflies and other pollinators. You’ll often see their soft blue flowers peeking through in butterfly gardens. They’re also relatively deer and drought resistant. As an added bonus, Amsonias are low on the pest and disease-attracting list. The only downside with this plant is that its milky sap can be mildly toxic and irritating to humans and house pets. As long as you keep them away from prying fingers and paws, you’ll get to enjoy their beauty year-round without trouble. Propagating can be done in a few ways, either by sowing seeds or taking cuttings. You can also propagate by division, but it’s the most impractical and difficult method when it comes to Bluestars. Propagating by cutting yields the best results and helps retain chosen species characteristics. Sowing seeds is second best, but results may vary, giving you a stunning Bluestar that has little similarity to the parent plant. Over and above that, propagating by seed can be a slow process.
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For such a little tree, this thing sure pumps out a lotta lemons every winter! I harvested a hefty basket of lemons last week, and I didn’t even put a dent in my tree. I’m not sure how many pounds were harvested, but it did require two hands to haul the basket from the garden… For such a little tree, this thing sure pumps out a lotta lemons every winter! I harvested a hefty basket of lemons last week, and I didn’t even put a dent in my tree. I’m not sure how many pounds were harvested, but it did require two hands to haul the basket from the garden to the kitchen (and an extra set of hands to pick up all the lemons that kept tumbling out!). If I had to guess, I’d say this first round yielded at least 60 fat, juicy lemons. And winter’s not even over yet… nor have all my lemons fully ripened. One can only make so much lemonade, lemon bread, and lemon curd in one season, so for the next two weeks, I’ll show you a few different ways to preserve these fruits at home. You don’t need to be a canner or a cook, but you can still have that bright lemony flavor long after the last lemon has been plucked.
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Grow a bottlebrush tree or shrub for its showy flowers. There are many varieties to choose from, big or small.Named for its bottle brush-shaped flowers, this plant can grow as a tree or a shrub. Originating in Australia, there are around 50 species of bottlebrush plants, each with a slightly different growth pattern. The bottlebrush tree is a great attractor of pollinators and is closely related to the paperbark melaleuca. It’s such a close relative that all but four varieties have been moved to the melaleuca category! While commercial nurseries continue to sell most bottlebrush trees as callistemon, most scientists and botanical gardens have made the transition to new names. No worries, though – I’ll make sure you have both to choose from. Whether you grow your bottlebrush as a shrub or a full bottlebrush tree, you’ll enjoy the bright spikes of color! And so will the local butterflies and bees.A bottlebrush is several species of shrubs or small trees from the genus Callistemon and Melaleuca, native to Australia. They are well-known for their distinctive, bright red, cylindrical flower spikes that resemble a traditional bottle brush used for cleaning bottles, hence the name. The most common species is Callistemon citrinus, also known as the crimson bottlebrush.Bottlebrush trees, specifically from the genus Callistemon, are native to Australia. They occur naturally in the eastern and southeastern parts of Australia. In their native habitat, they are often found along streams and in wet or swampy areas, although they are highly adaptable and can also thrive in drier, well-drained environments. They are often cultivated in other parts of the world due to their showy flowers.
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When we first moved into our place about ten years ago, I knew I wanted to grow fruit trees. Our block is not ideally situated for this, in all honesty. It slopes awkwardly, and the front yard is North facing. The soil was very poor limestone. It was planted with eucalypts and palms, with weed matting throughout. The backyard was closely planted with huge conifers and agaves. We paid an arborist to remove the trees and my husband tackled the agaves, and with a blank slate, we planned the garden. Our goal was to have a mix of productive and sensory plants, with the intention to always have something edible to pick from the garden at any time, whether it be herbs, fruits or veggies. A decade later, we have a large herb, sensory, and veggie garden on rich soil, and about twenty different fruiting trees. In the front garden, this includes a black mulberry tree, which was planted nine years ago. I love mulberries, but you can’t buy them in the shops. I have fond memories of visiting my friend’s house in the Summer, climbing her huge mulberry tree and sitting up there and searching around, finding the little black jewels. I still like ferreting around the tree, searching around jewel-like fruits to find the black, ripe berries. They look like they belong in a fairy story. Mulberries are not a commercially viable crop. Picking them takes ages, as the berries ripen at different times. You have to walk slowly around the tree to find the couple of berries per branch ready to pick. They don’t transport well, and the shelf life is not long. So if you want mulberries, you have to grow them. And they are an acquired taste. Not really sweet like commercial berries, mulberries are tart-sweet with an underlying metallic taste that some people do not enjoy. However, they are hard won. I was not expecting to have much of a crop for the first couple of years, but in the past few years we have waited expectantly for fruit that never came. We have had a couple of dry, tasteless berries each season, then the birds have carried off the rest. Last season, I was despondent, then threatening. I told my husband, “That bloody tree has one more season to produce some fruit, or it’s gone!” Then I thought, as with many garden-related issues, maybe the problem isn’t the tree – maybe it’s the gardener. It didn’t fill me with joy to admit it, believe me. I don’t want to accept that perhaps I had been neglecting the tree. After all, the apricot tree gave us a bumper crop last year. So did the lime tree. Clearly, I could get a tree to produce fruit. But just as different kids need different parenting techniques, so might different fruit trees. So, I read up on mulberry trees. Any info I could find on mulberries, I consumed. Of course, there were differing opinions. Some said prune. Some said don’t prune. But almost all the experts agreed mulberries needed two things in abundance. Water and fertiliser. Not so revolutionary after all. Turns out, I had been underwatering and under-feeding the poor tree. I upped the water, which makes a lot of sense on our north-facing hillside (deep water, once a week), and increased the nutrition. From early Spring, I fed the tree with a couple of handfuls of organic fruit tree fertiliser every month around the base of the tree, watered in well.
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We’re hot and spicy… literally!
A cozy, classic beef stew with tender beef, carrots, mushrooms + potatoes. Everyone will love this, especially on those chilly nights!
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