Our new old garden on False Bay

by Diana Studer

 - gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

We moved ten days ago. Our days in the Swartland wheat farming town of Porterville are a memory now.

Our wooden giraffe gazes thru a glazed once was front door

First thing we saw as we drove to our new home, was the beginning of a fire on the mountain slope. Later we went to the wetland to watch the helicopters filling their fire buckets to water bomb the fire.

False Bay mountain fire in November 2014

Takes us back to Camps Bay days, when the sight of the sea means - we are going home! (Altho our views from home are four slices of mountain, not the sea)

False Bay from Baden Powell Drive coming from Khayelitsha
Ou Kaapse Weg coming down to Muizenberg

Country cat Chocolat was fascinated by Look People as he perched on the windowsill, those first few days when we kept the cats in. Later the Ungardener fitted a cat flap. All they still have to settle to, is spending the day out, in the garden.

Chocolat, Mackaya bella
Aragon, Streptocarpus

For the water plants we have a baby bath, to tide us over till a smaller Ungardening Pond is reincarnated. The pots are grouped around the garden, dormant bulbs, tough succulents, need some shade, and tender careful ones.

Potted plants and succulent cuttings
waiting for landscaping and renovating
so they can be planted

We have inherited some horrors which we move on each Thursday which is recycling day. A twirldry with a death wish, weirdly set at headCRACKing height - to be replaced by a pergola style washing line inspired by Cindy's Enclosure in Kigali Rwanda. A Wendy house, a squat brown blot, where the pond will be. Our tenant kindly left two large potted plants in the living room, and a corroded metal bench - that secluded green corner will be our shady al fresco dinner table. The sunny one is just outside the kitchen.

Twirldry, Wendy house, orphaned pot plants and bench

The garden is lush and green, despite the southeaster (from which we are somewhat sheltered). But, neglected overgrown in desperate need of pruning. There are four embattled bottlebrush trees on my Got To Go list, and a wall of overhanging branches from one neighbour. We have three garden thugs. Ivy which the Ungardener likes, but I have to battle it out of the garden beds. Pretty blue flowers on periwinkle - which is happy to devour garden beds, and to my horror climb and strangle trees! But the stuff of nightmares is spider plant, hen and chickens. Each plant I pull comes  with dozens of bulbs, many lurking for the NEXT round. I, who always compost or mulch garden waste - have filled six garbage bags.

Overgrown garden needs pruning, and love

As I close Pandora's box, and open the Christmas treasures - I find lots of arum lilies with the elegant spears of leaf. Glossy green Coprosma from New Zealand, and a variegated Marble Chips. A substantial shrub with terracotta leaves - anyone name it for me? Large fern flourishing in the shady corner.

Thanks to Dani at Eco Footprint - South Africa - terracotta leaves are fiddlewood. 15m high tree (ours has been brutally stunted) from the West Indies. Citharexylum spinosum in the verbena family. Interesting that in (May or our southern) November the leaves turn orange and drop ahead of the summer heat, pushing thru fresh green leaves.

Arum lily, Coprosma Marble Chips
orange leaved mystery??, fern

Exploring the mostly commonorgarden flowers. South American Fuchsia and Bougainvillea , Australian bottlebrush, Chinese Buddleja, with an indigenous red Pelargonium.

Fuchsia, bottlebrush
Pelargonium
Bougainvillea
Buddleja

Alstroemeria Peruvian lily, indigenous Lobelia erinus, Asian lemon and star jasmine, European Viola tricolor heartsease, Californian poppy.

Alstroemeria, lemon
Lobelia
heartsease, star jasmine, Californian poppy

If I crop the pictures just so - the garden has magical corners!

Our new old False Bay garden in November 2014. The beginning.

Christmas flowers for December

Pictures by Diana Studer  

of  Elephant's Eye on False Bay 

(If you mouse over teal blue text, it turns seaweed red.

Those are my links.

To read or leave comments, either click the word Comments below,

or click this post's title)