Anyone who has had the sense to plant a wattle, a crabapple or a dozen rose bushes can have a gorgeous spring garden without even trying. If a previous tenant planted a dozen tulips, some daffs or jonquils, your spring garden will be stunning, as the bulbs will have multiplied each year.
It's pretty easy to be fabulous in summer, too, as long as you planted a few punnets of annuals and fed them well, instead of the snails dining on them instead. Add a magnolia grandiflora, some bottle brush, azaleas, grevillea, a dwarf lillypilly or three, and maybe some buddleia plus those roses, and it will be even better. Canberra's autumn garden beauty is taken care of by tens of thousands of deciduous trees and millions of gold and red dapples.
Even early to mid-winter gardens can be wonder-filled without much effort, glowing with yet another wattle's blooms, proteas, camellias, late roses, and a carpet of autumn leaves or camellias over green grass.
But a good looking garden late winter? This is the test of a true gardener. Be honest. What does your garden look like now?
My vegie garden is mostly dead choko vine. Somewhere underneath there's rhubarb, bok choi, Chinese cabbage, a few lettuce, English spinach, silverbeet and perennial leeks, but you need to battle the choko vine to get to them. The once blue salvias are now a hedge of bare echidna quills. The wallabies have munched the red hot pokers, so they look like they have a bad case of mange. If you keep looking straight ahead, the camelias are stunning. Just don't look down, and see the mush of dead blooms below. Even the kentia palms by the front door are festooned with dead kiwi fruit leaves.
It doesn't have to be this way. In the decade I worked on a TV gardening show, our garden had to look fabulous all winter, because that's when most filming occurs, and there's only so much you can do with plastic geraniums poked into the ground to form a colourful background.
Actually our garden would look pretty good now with just a day's work: haul out the choko vine, and the veg below will perk up. Mulch the weeds in the front flower garden and visitors will see bulbs, not mess. Whipper-snip the salvias so everyone notices the cumquat tree glowing with about 800 orange fruit. Rake the dead camelia flowers off what I call lawn and the wombats call "dinner" and the camellias can really show off their blooms.
There are many ways to cheer up a late winter garden. Run an edger or even a spade along the garden path - neat edges perk up a garden surprisingly well. Hang a couple of baskets of pansies by the front door, and water and feed them and give them a light prune mid-spring, and they will flower and be fabulous till mid-summer. Some light raking, a touch of pruning, and suddenly the dead-looking deciduous trees will have a sculptural beauty.
Hire a steam hose, and get the paths and patio really clean - and even the house walls too. They may not actually look dirty, but a powerful hosing turns them bright. Renew the door mat, if yours is worn out or shredded at the edges by a wombat who fancied a bit for dessert.
Place a shallow pot of hyacinths on the garden table. If necessary, acquire a garden table. You can get a truly gorgeous one for about $2000. You can get a sturdy but tatty one second-hand one with matching chairs for about $20 and either sand it down to wood or paint it, then add the potted hyacinths or even pots of red geraniums/pelargoniums. Ours are still bravely blooming up on the garden table despite the frost below.
Have a garden centre mooch, keeping all males above the age of four firmly away from the garden gadget aisles, and go for the plants. I haven't had a winter garden centre temptation day yet, so I'm not sure what you'll find - it is impossible for garden centres to stock everything. There may be Grevillea 'winter delight', with cream and scarlet blooms, or Banksia 'birthday candles' that I long for every time I see them, but have never had both cash and opportunity at the same time.
Look for correas, heuchera, euphorbias, including the ones with multi-coloured leaves that I can't decide if I like or abhor. Treat yourself to pots of bulbs in bloom knowing that they will double or triple in number when planted out after the stems have died down, so you'll get your investment back with interest by next winter.
If I'd had a bit of forethought, even the vegie garden would be colourful: purple cauliflowers; red or orange-stemmed silverbeet; crinkly grey kale which has its own elegant beauty, or purple frilly kale with bright green edges which is so totally over the top it is adorable as well as edible, or pink sprouting kale, or the one that has a bright pink heart with green leaves all around it. Steam it lightly and serve whole, as a centrepiece, with vinaigrette...
I've done none of this. Have you? Does anyone reading this possibly have a stunning late winter garden in Canberra? Send us a photograph to online@canberratimes.com.au, or even some tips on how to turn the late winter glooms into glory. If you have green thumbs even in late winter, it's time to show them off.
This week I am:
- Definitely raking away the dead camellias. (They make excellent mulch).
- Hoping every visitor will pick and take away a few bags of Tahitian limes each.
- Annoying the kangaroos by going for a walk just as they begin their late afternoon dinner. They gaze at me reproachfully. "We don't disturb your meals. Extend the same courtesy to us".
- Filling vases with green-fringed arum lilies, the ones that don't set seed and become weeds.
- Picking the tender new celery leaves that come up each week, now we have eaten the main stems.
- Feeling guilty because the bare ground under the choko vine would be perfect to plant a crop of onions now, but I doubt there'll be a chance to do it.
