Dahlia Orders
Hello friends,
My dahlia orders from Garden Post and Bulbs Direct arrived a couple of weeks ago, and they had to go into the ground immediately. Thanks to the back garden makeover, there was space for lots of pretty dahlias, and I was able to purchase some of the dahlias that have been on my wish list for a while.
My new dahlia varieties that have arrived so far are:
- Anemone Dahlias: Fenna Baij, Totally Tangarine, Mambo, and The Phantom
- Decorative Dahlias: Dutch Pearl, Creme De Cassis, Missis Miley, Silver Years, Lady Liberty
- Ball Dahlias: Brown Sugar, Wizard of Oz
- Dinner Plate Dahlias: Cafe Au Lait Royal, Pinkie Swear
They arrived on a snow day, so I had to plant the dahlias between snow showers, while the sun was out. Some of the dahlias were already showing decent growth in new sprouts.
Luckily, Patches, the neighbour's cat was there to keep me company during the whole process. They love hanging out in our back garden, and often follow me around to see what I'm up to.
I had so many dahlias arriving that I had to make a list of current varieties, and those arriving, along with other details, so I could plan a good mix of colours throughout our garden.
There's still a dahlia order from Mount Mera to arrive, and once that's done, all my dahlias will be in place for the summer. I can't wait for them to start coming up in November, and to start photographing and enjoying them over summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.
Signs of Spring 2024
Hello friends,
Spring is just around the corner, and my garden is showing many signs of spring. I'd thought I'd share with you some photos I've taken recently.
My miniature Irises have already put on a show with their beautiful, dainty flowers.
Crocuses have also been flowering.
As are a lot of my daffodil varieties.
And finally, my deciduous shrubs and trees have started breaking their buds, and there's also blossom appearing on our fruit trees.
Spring is less than a week away, and I'm so excited for warmer and longer days. There's lots to do in the garden now, so it's time to get on with all the things, especially seed sowing.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
Floret Flower Farm and Other Seeds from Emerden Flowers
Hello friends,
I was doom scrolling on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and came across a post by Emerden Flowers announcing they were collaborating with Floret Flower Farm in the USA, and they were bringing Floret and Dawn Creek Zinnias and Dahlias into New Zealand.
Before you could blink an eye, I had zoomed over to Emerden Flowers website, and excitedly perused the pre-order links to the Zinnias and Dahlia seed mixes. I've followed Floret Flower Farm for years, and even have a couple of their books. Their book "Discovering Dahlias" is my bible when it comes to Dahlias. I was so excited, even with the very high prices of the seed packets. Now was my chance to get some seeds, and I wasn't going to miss out. I still had money budgeted for our backyard garden project, and had no problem in justifying buying 3 seed packets to hubby, along with some other seed packets from Emerden Flowers I had been wanting.
First up was choosing a Dahlia seed mix, I finally settled on choosing Floret Original Bee's Choice flower seed packet, as I want to encourage bees into my garden. Choosing two zinnia packets was more fraught with danger. After angsting over it for days leading up to when they went on sale, including spending way too much time on Instagram looking at people's photos of the various zinnia mixes, late on the Saturday night I chose Floret Original Precious Metals zinnias, and also Dawn Creek Blush zinnias, as they are colours that will fit in well in my backyard (as well as my front yard). I had also chosen a bunch of very cool Emerden flower seed packets, as some of them were on my list of plants to get for a while.
On the Sunday morning when the seed packets went on sale, I had all of the internet tabs open on the seeds I wanted, and I'd logged into Emerden Flowers website. In the minutes before 10 am I added all the Emerden Flowers into the web cart, and waited impatiently for 10 am. As soon as it hit 10 am, I reloaded the web pages for the Floret and Dawn Creek varieties I wanted, and added them to the cart. Once I was sure I got everything, I checked out, and bought it with my credit card.
It took a while before I got the confirmation email from Emerden Flowers, and then I started happy dancing.
Within a couple of days my precious seeds were delivered to my door, and it was time to fawn all over my pretty new seed packets.
The packaging for the Floret Flower Farm part of the order was stunning, and I really loved the included growing guide.
I also bought a range of Emerden flower seed varieties including pansy, larkspur, floxglove, sunflowers, cosmos, calendula, and echinacea.
I am really excited to start planting these seeds in spring, which is less than a couple of weeks away now.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
Our New Backyard Garden Plan and Buying All the Plants
Hello friends,
Six week's after the garden consultant came to our home, we received the garden plan back for our backyard. Overall I was pretty happy with it, but the garden consultant had forgotten some of the shrubs he said to remove, and I was a bit overzealous about which shrubs were to go.
This is the garden plan and plant list I was given, and in the following pictures I'll show the tweaks I've made to the plan so far, as I had time to think about what else I wanted to do with the space. The thing to note about this plan, was that the garden consultant hadn't included the dahlia plants already in the garden, or the small pond we have, so I had to tweak it for those as well. In this plan all the plants and shrubs and trees marked in black were pre-existing plants, and those coloured were suggestions for which ones to put in.
I traced out the plan given so I could have a clean slate, and I've coloured in the plants that we already had, and those I bought and then planted in the garden.
Starting at the bottom left corner of the back garden, I finally purchased a Little Miss Perfect rose bush for my own from Wals Plant Land. Back when I lived in Wellington I bought this rose bush variety for a friend who is also a crafter and gardener, and she sends me pictures of the floribunda flowers. It's a stunning bush with salmon petals, and many flowers. It's also a small bush rose at only 60 cm tall
Next up is space set aside for 3 dahlia tubers coming this spring. Above them is an unknown peony plant that was planted underneath the unknown magnolia further along the garden, that I transplanted.
Above the peony is the Daphne Perfumed Princess in white, that I bought from Nichols when I met with the garden consultant. I have really bad experiences with daphnes, they never seem to grow well for me, even when I treat them with kid gloves. I hope it does well as it flowers over winter which is great for bees.
Next to the daphne is an existing unknown hydrangea bush that produces lovely flowers in summer. Even though it's not in the garden consultant's plan, I wanted to keep one hydrangea in the garden. Beside the hydrangea is an unknown deciduous magnolia tree that is well established in the garden. It's flowers are white and pink.
Next to the magnolia is a space set aside for a hosta plant that is part of the garden consultant's plan. It's a dark shady and wet spot next to the viburnum beside it, but I'll have to wait until spring before shops start have them in store.
Along the left side fence line is an unknown grape vine which produces delicious dark purple grapes. Underneath the grapevine is 4 empty spots to be filled in in spring, along with another unknown peony I had to transplant from elsewhere in the garden.
In the back left corner was where one of the rhododendrons was. As I had taken that out, I decided to fill that space with one of my wish list plants, which was an evergreen evergreen blush Fairy Magnolia.
Beside the fairy magnolia tree in the back corner, is space for two columnar apple ballerina trees. They only grow 30 cm wide, but they grow 3 meters tall. They were supposed to go into the back right part of the garden, but I decided to put them in full sun. The two ballerina apple varieties I chose were Waltz and Flamenco, one is a eating and dessert apple, and the other is a cooking and preserving and dehydrating apple. Between the two of them we should have all the apples we need. The Flamenco variety is already in the ground, but I'm waiting for the Waltz variety to arrive from Mosgiel Garden Place.
Next to the apple trees is a small dahlia I moved from another part of my garden, Keith Hammett Mystic Sparkler. It's a beautifully bright pink and yellow small dahlia that is small in form. I bought this dahlia in Wellington, and before we moved back home to Dunedin I posted this dahlia and others to my sister during winter. She planted them in her garden for me, and then the next autumn once we had a home down here, I dug all my dahlias up, and moved them into our garden.
To the right of the Mystic Sparkler dahlia is another wish list shrub, Mexican Orange Blossom. I've wanted one of these for ages, and I was so pleased when the garden consultant suggested it.
And finally in the middle of our back garden fence, was the space that our maple tree was in. After it was chopped down due to our back fence neighbour on the left blackmailing us, I wanted to replace it with another maple. The garden consultant and I mulled over which variety to get, and he convinced me to invest in an Acer griseum, the paperbark maple. It grows to about 4 metres height eventually, and has bright orange leaves in autumn, and a beautiful cinnamon covered trunk that peels like paper. It's really stunning. I managed to find one out at Trees of the World, and at 2 metres high already, it barely fit in our car on the way home.
On the right center of the back fence we start with the shrub Eriostemon Bournda Beauty. It's a waxy green shrub with thousands of tiny white and pink flowers in winter. This shrub is usually covered in honey bees in late winter and early spring.
Beside it we have the red-stemmed dogwood (Cornus alba Sibirica) that I bought when we first bought our home. It's red stems are stunning in winter when there's nothing much else going on in the garden.
Next door we have a replacement camellia. The previous camellia was an ugly red colour, and it was squishing and blocking out light to my feijoa bushes. I was in Mitre 10 and came across Camellia Avalanche, which is a slim camellia (only 1 m wide) with absolutely beautiful white flowers. It was flowering when I bought it, so there has been some colour in the garden over the last month. As it is slim and tall it won't interfere with my feijoa bushes. I think this camellia would look great in a row as a hedge.
Beside the camellia are my two feijoa bushes, Unique and Kaiteri. Unique has smaller feijoa fruit which are sweet and not grainy, and Kaiteri has huge, sweet feijoa, and it's a very heavy cropper. Whenever I have visitors in the garden in autumn, they are stunned by how big and wonderful the fruit are. They usually go and buy a plant of their own after trying our feijoa.
Next to the feijoa bushes was the space that the two apple trees were supposed to go. When I talked with the garden consultant initially I brought up the idea of getting an pear tree, but it wasn't included in the plan. With this space now free, I decided to go ahead and get a pear tree. After much pondering, I decided to go with the dwarf pear Garden Belle. It only reaches 3 meters in height, but I think I'll keep it trimmed smaller than that. The variety is supposed to be mostly self-fertile, but I know of another pear tree down the street, so it's close enough for bees to cross-pollinate it on their travels.
Next to the pear tree is the stump of a wild elderflower tree. The tree arrived in our backyard from birds eating nearby elderflower berries, and leaving a deposit, and it's so good to have one of our own in our backyard. We had to chop it back hard over summer as it was growing huge, but luckily it survived, and is already budding shoots. From now on I'll take better care of it. It's not in the best spot, but I won't turn down a free tree.
In the back right corner of our backyard is an unknown Robinia tree variety (Black Locust), it's not in the healthiest condition, and it was pollarded by the previous owners. We've never seen it flower, and it causes quite a big mess to clean up in autumn. I'm not sure if I'll keep it, but I'll leave it there for now. Eventually over spring I'll be under planting it with shade plants.
Next to the Robinia is Pseudowintera Red Leopard, which likes light woodland conditions, which is what it gets underneath the Robinia tree. I like the speckled red and green evergreen leaves in the dappled light.
The next shrub along is our Viburnum opulus Sterile shrub aka the Snowball tree. I've always wanted one of my own, and the snowball flowers look wonderful in spring.
Beside the snowball tree is one of my damask roses, Duc De Cambridge, and I bought it for collecting scented flowers, which is used in rose oil and rose water production. Damask roses are hard to get in New Zealand, and it took me two years of searching before I could buy one.
Above the damask rose is our unknown Syringia/lilac tree variety. Lilacs are supposed to be shrubs, but our lilac has turned itself into a tree, and is about 3 metres high. It has beautiful fragrant purple flowers in spring, and I'm very happy with what it's decided to be.
Underneath the lilac tree is our small solar-powered water feature which is enjoyed by both bird and cat life alike. And behind the water feature is our Banksia rose "The Pearl" which runs along the side fence, and you can read more about it in this recent blog post.
Beside the water feature is my other damask rose, Isaphan. I also plan to collect rose petals from this shrub too. As a bonus it'll block out our new neighbour.
Next up is another new plant, Westringia Wynyabbie Gem. It' s a frost hardy evergreen which has beautiful star-shaped blue flowers in spring and summer, and gets to only 1 m tall.
In the bottom right corner of our back garden is our three year old Syrmna quince tree. Last year it produced it's first fruit, and the 5 quince were great poached, and eaten with vanilla ice cream. My plan is to try and keep it to about 3 meters tall so it doesn't get too big.
And finally, next to the quince tree is another plant suggested by the garden consultant. I bought the David Austin rose Gertrude Jekyll, and is tolerant of partial shade conditions, and reaches about 1 m in height with bright pink flowers over spring and summer, which should brighten up that corner of the garden next to the berry cage.
All along this right side of the garden is space for many smaller plants, including dahlias, bulbs, annuals and perennials. I already have 3 dahlias in the ground, which I've had for years: Protegee, Pink Magic, and Arthur Hambley. I've ordered more dahlias for the backyard, but they won't arrive until spring.
I can't wait for spring to arrive, so I can finish planting the back garden. I've already started seed sowing for spring, and it'll continue well into spring. I hope you've enjoyed this rather long blog post, and to see which plants are now in my garden.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
Rose Pruning and Seed Sowing Round 1
Hello friends,
We're over halfway through winter now, and it's time to prune roses, and to also start seed sowing for the coming spring. My first job was to prune the roses, since I'd noticed that some of them had started breaking their buds, so I didn't have choice but to prune them early.
In the front garden I have roses including Blackberry Nip (Hybrid Tea), Aotearoa (HT), Celebration (HT), Happy Birthday (Floribunda, a birthday gift from my aunt), and My Girl (HT). They were all pruned using my grandad's tried and trued rose pruning advise. It's basically the 5D method, which is to remove the dead, dying, diseased, and damaged, and deranged plant tissue, and then trim for shaping, so that it looks like an open vase shape, with no branches that go toward the center of the rose bush.
In the end they looked much better for their pruning, and I'll fertilise them closer to spring.
Once that was done, it was time to trim the back garden roses. Our banksia rose, The Pearl, is a thorn-free climbing rose which trails along one length of the back garden. We planted the banksia rose once we found out that one of the neighbour's subdivided their backyard, and that a house was going to be built right next to our fence line. I've been training the banksia rose along the whole length of the fence line in the last couple of years, and over summer, when we tend to be out in the garden more, it provides a green wall of privacy for us.
Trimming the banksia rose basically just involved a lot of taking out the overgrown branches back to the main branches, and then tying up the lengths further along the fence line. It will still be a couple of years before it reaches all the way along the fence.
The last job was to take a look at my two Damask roses Isaphan and Duc de Cambridge. I bought them for collecting their scented flowers, which are used in rose oil and rose water production. They don't require any pruning in the first years until they become established, but there were some dead stems on them, so I pruned those off.
Next up was to start seed sowing, so I pulled out my flower seed containers and pulled out my packets of sweet peas and homegrown Calendula officinalis seeds.
I sowed the following Keith Hammett sweet peas: Blue Shift, Blue Butterflies, Burlesque, Liqourice, NZ Gardener, Somewhere, Sapphire, Triple G, and Turquoise Lagoon.
I also sowed seeds I collected from the Calendula officinalis plants I grew last summer. It's so rewarding to collect your own seed, and then grow new plants from them. Since then both my sweet peas and calendula seeds have sprouted, and I'm currently in the process of repotting them.
Spring is nearly here, and I'm very excited to be sowing seed nearly every day over the next couple of months. I'm itching to sow my tomato and chilli plants now, but want to hold off for another week at least. I need to balance when they need to go into the ground in the glasshouse, versus when I can plant all the other seedlings growing in the glasshouse into the garden. Our last frost was the first week of November last year, and it was very stressful having to frost proof so many seedlings...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Social Media
Archives