Home » Plants & Animals » Australian Gardening » Autumn In The Hills Around Perth, Western Australia

Autumn In The Hills Around Perth, Western Australia

© John Bottomley

Yes, autumn has arrived here but you would hardly guess that it has.The temperature is still fairly warm and the rain almost non-existent. I don't know what you like to think about in the autumn, or what you like to do in the garden? There is to be a concert in the grounds of one of the local high schools at the weekend - yes it is still warm enough to have outdoor concerts. A picnic night with orchestral and jazz music, and the concert is to raise funds for the East Timor Appeal. We are even going to get one of the ABC identities to compere the whole event. Turning to the garden and the magic of autumn, think about the colour of a selection of autumn bedding plants. These offer the ideal tool for painting colourful effects in your garden. They can be planted in borders, containers or in hanging baskets and amazingly enough you can have an almost instantaneous image of colour and pleasure. Pansies, snapdragons, and the like are a good suggestion for this idea. Autumn again is possibly a favourite time of the year for a lot of people. There is of course much to do to prepare for the coming months. This is nature's planting time and if you establish some ideas in this part of the year the plants placed in the ground now will out perform those placed at any other season. The soil is warm and the plants get their roots down very quickly. Roses must be fed, citrus can get stressed if there has been a long dry spell and should be fed with an all-purpose fertiliser, a good crop of home-grown potatoes would be nice for later in the year, so plant them now. The native plants they see all around excite a lot of people who visit Western Australia. There are lots of new releases of spectacular forms of native plants, and many more gardens are including these plants in the design and layout. Autumn is an ideal time to begin your native garden, and most of the varieties are very easy to grow. Varieties such as: Melaleuca incana nana, Lechenaultia Formosa Eldorado are two of the delightful small bushes that will attract birds, butterflies, frogs and lizards. The vegetable garden also needs to be sown now including beetroot, broad beans, carrots, cauliflower, radish and turnip. You can also plant out some capsicum, lettuce, silver beet, and spinach; these will require a weekly fertilising to promote a rapid growth while the warmer weather is around.