Down to the Dirt in the Spring Garden
The lesson over I will give you a small verbal picture of "Kibbenjelok" our country garden in Spring time in Australia. The showy first ladies of the Spring time ornamental garden, Camellias and Magnolias, have almost finished their dramatic display. It is now time for the many Rhododendrons to enter onto the stage. The first to really parade their beauty are three red hybrids, Unknown Warrior, Cornubia and Ivery's Scarlet that are followed by Alice [pink] and a white-pink hybrid White Pearl. These plants came as two inch plants+ from a wholesale nursery, selling to retail nurseries, at a very small price. We had to buy a minimum of twelve plants from each of the varieties, so that made a total of sixty plants. We received the tiny little plants in the second year of planting the garden at "Kibbenjelok". We had set aside a bed to put 'grow on' plants, to be placed later in their final position when they were more mature. The 'orchard garden' was still full of apple trees marching up a slight incline, in long straight lines. I said to Kees [our chief planter and my husband] "We don't really need all these. Let's just plant them under the apple trees and hope some of them grow". He looked at me with raised eyebrows and surprise in his eyes.
I have not counted how many of those little plants also smiled with determination and grew and grew until they are now ten feet bushes, but they certainly make an exciting statement in the garden scene. Some of the Magnolias have gone over [M campbellii, soulangiana, stellata, veitchii ] but the unusual Magnolia wilsonii , with its pendulous saucer shaped white flowers with crimson stamens, is yet to show off. I noted with pleasure that our small clump of Trilliums has increased to eight flowers with a new plant with one flower growing beside its mother plant. I have no room to mention the rest of the cast that so delight us during the Spring time. They will have to wait until next month when the scene will have changed to the later Rhododendrons, the Primulas and perhaps the first of the Roses. But I must mention how wonderful I find the fresh new leaves of the deciduous trees, the Birches, the Acers, the Beeches [that wonderful citrus green] and the other players that
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