As the sun finally dawns a gloomy yellow instead of pink or ominous red for the first time in a week, I am taking stock of the garden.
Mine's looking pretty sad but so is every other garden. I was unexpectedly away for a few weeks and my noble parents tried to keep it all alive through a ridiculous heatwave, but if you're not here to sprinkle around the spare shower water on a hot evening there's only so much the plants can survive. Then the day after we got back it was in the mid-40s and stayed that way for days. And then all hell broke loose, but that's another story.
In this bush backyard, mercifully unscathed by fire, there's an assessment underway: what coped with the dry and the heatwaves, what thrived, what faltered? And what lessons can we learn from that for future garden planning?
Here we lost:
Gaura (6)
Windflowers (6)
Erica longifolia (2)
Grevillea Bronze Rambler
Grevilleas (3)
Banksia 'Golden Candles' (2)
Kennedia 'Running Postman' (2)
Correa Alba prostrate (though it had also been chewed by Warren)
Hebe (2)
Snow in Summer (2)
Red and white Valerian
Dill, lemon verbena, sage and thymes.
I had also recently transplanted some daylilies and four roses that haven't survived the shock and then the summer. I even lost a few succulents, which is pretty hard to do.
To add insult to injury, some unidentified creature had jumped the fence into the veggie patch and chewed the rhubarb down to stumps.
On the critical list are:
The olive tree (as if we haven't been through enough already)
The Monster Hebe
Flaxes red and otherwise (4)
Sea holly (2)
Grevillea White Wings
Daylilies (yellow)
Looks like quite a bit when you list it like that but it actually doesn't seem quite as bad as I first thought.
They are all replaceable, some more easily than others, some I didn't even like much - and some may just have to be replaced with other more appropriate plants. Which brings me to...
Thriving:
Citrus
Grevillea Poorinda something or other (I know that doesn't narrow it down much, but sadly the label blew away last weekend - it's one of the prostrate monsters)
Grevillea rosemarinifolia
Cistus
Lavender
Olive
Rosemary
(No surprises there, I guess.)
The veggie patch was a mess and there won't be much of a summer harvest except for tomatoes, but that's all transient anyway. Herbs can easily be replaced. The fruit trees managed to scrape through - just.
Like many others, the small Magnolia 'Little Gem' is scorched beyond belief but I think it'll pull through. The same goes for kangaroo paws, Marguerite daisies, roses galore and hellebores. They all look like crap right now but they still have sap running through their wee veins. Even bearded iris, sedges, dianella, poa and agapanthus are fried around our neck of the woods.
So what next?
First some more clean-up. The big hot winds last weekend made a mockery of my gutter clearing efforts, so it's up the ladder again and all hands to the rakes. The gums have been stripping so they look spectacular but the bark is lying in long strips everywhere (and look suspiciously like snakes in the moonlight - and tinder in the daylight).
I'm considering gravel where once was grass, but not too much.
Dead-heading may take a while, but the consensus is we shouldn't cut back anything too much, even though it looks awful, until March: there is still the possibility of more hot weather so we don't want to expose new growth to it. Grin and bear the brown leaves.
Audit and purge
There are clear lessons in the lists above about what is worth planting in these conditions, and over which plants we should draw a kindly veil. A quick look around your neighbourhood will provide similar feedback.
Once the air temperature cools down, we'll be replacing old with new:
Gaura
Windflowers
Erica longifolia
Grevilleas
Red Valerian
Banksia 'Golden Candles'
Daylilies
They're all worth another go.
I'll try to identify more specifically that unlabelled prostrate Grevillea*, because it's going gangbusters.
So the lesson is to plant many more of those, and indeed more of everything that's been thriving.
I refuse to have one of those backyard blitz white gravel, mondo and yucca gardens. I have made my peace with euphorbias and sedum over the past few months and am even allowing some of the indigenous cordyline to remain in spots where it doesn't offend me too much. I have allowed a few succulents to creep in here and there.
But there is a limit. White gravel, mondo and yucca is the new version of buffalo grass and pelargoniums if you ask me and I will not have it.
Water tanks
The casualty list would be much much longer if I hadn't had the tank installed this year. It's only small but it's got us through. I'll be ordering another one every year until we run out of downpipes and ground.
Shade
We've been planning a pergola, and it's become a priority both to help shade the house and veggie patch late on summer afternoons, as well as providing some shelter for people and creatures.
I've also had the brillian idea (patent pending) of making wide tubes of shadecloth, just like the usual rabbit protection bags, except taller, to slip over three stakes when days of 40 degrees are predicted. They can come in various sizes and would also be good for frost protection. I'm a genius. I'm going to make a fortune. Or not, as the case may be.
Fire-retardant plants
While there are some flames that cannot be turned, and no plant is truly fire-proof, but some will not burn as fast as others. Specifically, we don't want to plant anything that's like to just explode in the radiant heat or help spread the flames (some eucalypts and pines are among the worst). It's no coincidence that you see lines of agapanthus along the home paddock fences in the country - something succulent can sometimes be enough to slow a lazy grassfire.
In her classic Gardening Through the Year, Margaret Barrett lists the following (sourced originally from APSG):
Eucalyptus maculata (spotted gum)
Eucalyptus gummifera
E. bauerana
Angophora costata
Acacia cyanophylla
A. dealbata
A. pravissima
Banksia marginata
Hakea salicifolia
Grevillea rosemarinifolia
Mulch
Mulch early, mulch often - and if it's a fire warning day, wet it down well. The ground is so baked at the moment that water penetration is minimal, so more effort needs to go into adding compost, manure and more organic matter and nutrients to help the plants under stress now, and lay a better foundation for next summer.
Best get to it, then.
[Later: I remembered. It's Grevillea Poorinda Royal Mantle, of course.]
No comments:
Post a Comment