[Photography] A small selection of photos from the garden.

[moonvoice]

Only about ten photos in this batch,
including a stray photo from my Mum's garden.
Mostly Lechenaultia and Dampiera,
because they're so pretty,
and they cooperate with flowering very nicely.


Lechenaultia formosa.






Here's that stray photo from Mum's garden.





More Lechenaultia formosa.





Dampiera





I always forget this one. And I'm too tired to look it up. It's a great little groundcover though.





Lechenaultia biloba.





Lechenaultia biloba.





Dampiera. Yes, it really is that blue.









A wild Pia appears!

Comments

[transcendancing]

Such pretty blue flowers! I am always struck by blue flowers and although not Australian, irises are some of my favourite flowers (alongside antheriums).

[moonvoice]

Irises are really gorgeous! I love blue flowers as well, I think the biloba is my favourite, as it's so profuse and its flowers last for so long (once it starts, it's a few months before it stops), though unfortunately we lost all our biloba because of the summer. :/

Flowers

[dialecticdreamer]

Thanks so much for including the Latin names. Now I can look up the pretty, pretty flowers to see if any will grow in my neck of the woods.

Re: Flowers

[moonvoice]

If you want some advice - let me know what kind of substrate you have (soil), what region you're in and the climate / rainfall and I can let you know if these will do, and if not, then other possible recommendations! L. formosa in particular is notoriously fussy, which is why Perth local nurseries don't carry it anymore.

Re: Flowers

[dialecticdreamer]

The soil in my garden is mostly peat, lightened with compost. Still sticky and fine, but WOW, is it fertile. (Garden failure is almost always me forgetting to water enough! Summer highs 105F over 30 days a year, up to 110F for quite a few days. (I don't count for psychological reason, LOL.) Winter temps down to -5F, but that's one or two days per year.

Re: Flowers

[moonvoice]

Ah, you're in the US? That already kind of puts a dampener on things.

Western Australian local natives are generally designed for: sand with absolutely no fertility (literally, all fertilisers aside from specially designed native fertilisers kill them - because I've committed to local natives, I can't actually grow: grass (the fertiliser runoff kills them), plants that need watering more than once a week in summer), they do not flower in areas of high rainfall and tend to die overnight if exposed to serious frost (they cannot survive in regular temperatures below 36F - we don't get snow here ever, and we don't get frosts every year).

But probably also the most inconvenient part is we have a pure sand substrate, and they can't handle clay, peat, or rich fertile soils of any kind. They literally have evolved over tens of thousands of years to live in infertile, dessicated, fossilised sand-dunes. (Incidentally, it makes growing exotics in Western Australia very difficult - even though everyone is determined to do it - it generally takes two years to properly prepare the soil for the introduction of plants like azaleas and so on). They also need good drainage, which basically means water can stay in the soil around the root system, otherwise the root system will rot.

All stuff that we have pretty naturally here (we are going into about 4 months with only two days of rain), but can be hard to replicate in other places.

If you had a greenhouse that wasn't humid, and could handle sand substrates without making them damp - then maybe? As long as they weren't regularly exposed to anything below about 36F more than twice a year. That could potentially work. Slow release phosphorus fertiliser with little to no nitrogen might be hard to find, but it could probably be shipped. And forgetting to water with these guys is usually a good thing! They're drought proof. No watering necessary for 8 months of the year, and once a week (twice a week only if it's been 110F+ every day) only for the other four. :D

Re: Flowers

[dialecticdreamer]

I'm impressed by your dedication to local ecology!

I'd love to rip the rotten, lousy, water-hogging grass out of my front lawn and replace it with something halfway closer to native landscaping, but so far, my gardening skills and physical ability just aren't up to it.

But that level of drought-resistance? That's EPIC, and valuable here, too. Phosphorus heavy fertilizer = bone meal from the local nursery. No problem shipping.

Knowing how carefully you've chosen the plants makes them even more beautiful!

[clare_dragonfly]

Wow, beautiful photos--the color is spectacular! Those dampiera in particular are incredible. They remind me of my favorite type of Christmas lights, ones that are so blue they almost hurt my eyes.

[moonvoice]

Yeah, honestly they're so blue it's just incredible

[silverjackal]

So much beautiful blue! :) It pleases me enormously -- the Dampiera particularly -- and would even if it wasn't snowing here *again*. Yes, though it is the end of April. So the flowers are a doubly-welcome break from our abysmal weather. I also find the reticulated pattern of the leaves on your unnamed ground cover very interesting. The flower portion is pretty, but the leaf structure most eye-catching.

[calissa]

It is lovely to see your garden doing so well! It doesn't seem like that long ago since you planted it.