ARS Tasmania Newsletter – November December 2019

  • Date: 4th November 2019
  • author: Jenny Skinner

AROUND MY (ADOPTED) GARDEN

What a difference a week and a bit make to the look of the garden. Since my last visit so many plants have exploded into flower. The eye is drawn upward away from the tired looking spent bulbs (after all they’ve done their bit for the year), to the trees with fresh new foliage and of course, the rhododendrons.

One particularly nice combination that visitors to the recent Plant Fair were attracted to, was R. Mrs G W Leak below the spreading Cornus nuttallii. Perfection! Another crowd attractor is the South African everlasting daisy Edmondia pinifolia (formerly Helichrysum humile) with its brilliant pink buds and flowers. There is a white form which Ken and Lesley saw growing in the wild on the top of Mt Kilimanjaro. Perhaps there’s a white one growing at Woodbank that I haven’t found yet!

While I was scrabbling around in the shrubbery trying to get a good photo of the yellow tree peony, Paeonia lutea var. ludlowii, which is unfortunately flowering out of sight of the casual passerby, I came across the gorgeous dainty little flowers of Jovellana violacea, commonly named either the violet teacup or violet slipper flower. It’s from Chile and is an up- right mound forming plant ideal for hanging baskets, I would have thought. In the shade and out of the wind though! From one extreme to the other, this enormous anything but dainty flower on Puya chilensis has grown like the proverbial bean stalk over the past few months and has finally reached its peak of flowering.

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