Spring in My New Home

This winter I had to move houses and leave behind the slightly wild garden that I had.

Garden in the Old House

The joys of that winter garden can be viewed with pictures at ‘Winter in My Garden’. In that home the spring continued to have the nasturtiums, morning glory, roses, daffs and snowdrops but brought in new flowers too like the wisteria and jasmine. The perfume of those two is heady and pervades everywhere. One evening I had forgotten to shut the back door and left just the grill shut and the jasmine scent was in every room in the house. Here are some of the photos of my old garden in spring.

 

Wisteria in the back garden

 

Wisteria over the fence and neighbour's garage

 

Wisteria over the shed in the back garden

 

Jasmine in full bloom

 

Dog Rose Bush

 

Creeper Roses

 

 Old Roses with very sweet perfume

 

 

 

Hardy Thistle that grew strong every year

 

Peruvian Lilies

 

Lavender starts to bloom

 

Gardenias

 

Paperbark tree flowering

 

Flowering Palm

Garden in the New House

My new home has a better established garden and from what I gather was with one family for a few decades. Only recently has it been put out to rent and had one previous tenant besides us. It appears that they were not gardeners for most of the trees and bushes were not pruned. There is affront and back garden. The front garden has palm trees, a gum tree of sorts and an orange tree.

 

 

Front Garden

There is ornamental grass, bougainvillea with orange flowers, a small rose plant that appeared when some of the overgrown grass and weeds were pulled up and one or two other plants which have yet to be identified. I am sure as flowers come out I shall be able to search the net for its identity. These are all in front of veranda. 

Ornamental Grass

 

Orange Tree

 

Last 2 oranges of last year's harvest

 

 

 Orange Blossoms

The back garden is also large with well-established trees – variety of palms, banksia and ferns. Some of them I believe are old species – there seem to be a New Zealand Fern and a couple of Staghorn ferns.

 

Back Garden

 

 Fruiting Palms

 

 

From the neighbour's garden

 

 Banskia and Palms

 

Cones new (above) and old (below)

 

 

Banksia Flowers

 

Sweet perfum in this yet unidentified flower

 

Stand alone fern (need to find its identity)

 

Staghorn Fern on an old tree in the back garden

 

 

 Winter flowers stilll going strong

There is a well planted border running along the drive that proved even more interesting. It started with some flowers coming over from the neighbour’s side. Then there is a big bush of parrot flowers and a long thick stem of a rose that had not been cut back. On cutting down the old stems of parrot flowers we discovered that someone had tried to kill of the rose. We chopped the stem right back and hoped it would revive itself. I am glad to say that after a few weeks I have seen new leaves sprouting from this near dead plant. Next there is a plant with tiny white flowers and spiny leaves that has spread along the fence a little. A number of spider flower trees planted along the border. In between there are a couple of vines which also had not been pruned in a while. 

 

Parrot Flowers and the Rose that got sever pruning after the photo was taken

Last year's final bunch of grapes

 

 Emerging vine leaves

 

 A hard prune works wonders

 

Spider Flowers

 

There is a bush that had few leaves but many tight buds. We were not sure what to make of this one but the buds uncurled into new leaves literally within a couple of days of spring. Then new buds appeared and lovely purple flowers of all shades emerged. Now we could look up the flowers on the net to identify the plant which is from the family of nightshades. 

 

Brunfelsia Australis - nightshade

 

Further along there is a lovely cover of wild strawberries among the weeds and grasses. The strawberries are deep red and lovely to look at but watery and tasteless. There are some weeds with pretty little flowers as well.

 

 First wild Strawberry

Nosiy Miners are full of beans