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Ally's Summer Garden in the Wind.

© Allyso

Next comes a clump of Japanese windflowers. Scruffy leaves, moonlight-silver buds - and soon to produce those harsh pink flowers. Rather a shock, that pink, but the buds are so pretty we always leave it be.

Then we come to the first of the no-name flowers, a kind of delicate buttercup bloom with heart-shaped, violet-like leaves. That one grows by the river, and lives in the garden just as happily. Then there's the wild white river daisy (that's what we call it, anyway). A tale hangs there; a caution. This daisy used to grow in the rocks beside the river. Just two stems and a straggle of leaves (it was doing it hard that summer). We used to water it whenever we went for a swim. Poor thing, we thought, left to wilt in the heat of the summer... on a charitable impulse we dug it out of the rocks and planted it in the garden.

"Water every day!" we promised. "If you'll only grow!"

"Aghhhh!" gloated the daisy. It dug its roots into the soil, gulped the water, sucked up manure and *grew*. How it exploded, how it thrives, it's three times as high and three hundred times as wide. It's ten times the size of any of its siblings by the river. And in the summer it throws out blooms (wind-tossed or not), and in the winter it sneaks out little extra roots and stems and hopes that we won't notice...

Then there's the purple thing (delicate, pretty) that doesn't have a name that we remember. Then there's the mint that was stuck there on a whim and throve, and Ally's chamomile. And - and - and - well, that's the way it is in Ally's garden. The wind can make it sulk but does no lasting harm.

Perhaps if the plants were the proper distance apart they would suffer more!

Visit the Tasmanian Botanical Gardens at http://www.rtbg.tas.gov.au/

Or, look in on Gay Klok's gorgeous garden at the suite! Tasmanian Garden Journal http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/tasm...