Our False Bay garden in August

By Diana Studer 

- gardening for biodiversity 

 in Cape Town, South Africa

In August I planted Summer Gold, completing the side of the garden off the 'conservatory' and along the bedroom windows. The hippo marks the boundary for End of Month View.

Summer Gold and Spring Promise

I'm quietly surprised that Spring Promise is immediately living out the pink and white prettiness edged with silver leaves, that I planned. Veltheimia has dusky pink flowers and rippled leaves. White Podalyria delicately spotted. Vlei lilies wait for the pond. Pink ivy Pelargonium. Pots of Freesia alba, this one with yellow splodges. Nutmeg Pelargonium has kidney-shaped leaves. Dombeya with pendant clusters of shell pink flowers, perfect for upending in a bud vase to show their faces. Pink Pelargonium. Arum lily.

Veltheimia, Podalyria, vlei lily
Pelargonium, Freesia, nutmeg Pelargonium
Dombeya, Pelargonium, arum lily

Summer Gold, a reminder of my mother's favourite colour. Albuca with three petals and a hanging trumpet, a bit like a snowdrop. The sunshine bush, a Leucadendron I have coveted from the Groot Winterhoek to Cape Point, lights up the mountainside in winter. Euryops flat yellow daisies make a good home for flower spiders. Slender buttery trumpets of Ifafa lilies. Protea scolymocephala ivory lime green gorgeous little flowers. Hibiscus yellow in summer heat, glows orange in winter. Almost yellow ostrich feathers on Phylica.

Albuca, Leucadendron
Euryops, Ifafa lily, Protea scolymocephala
Hibiscus, Phylica

The white pillar was here, and that corner needed a focal point. The sculpture is my sister's work. Sadly too much travelling knocked off the statue's arms, and the repairs the Ungardener did needed concealing under paint. Our path winds thru pink then yellow flowers to the table under the carob where the Maid of the Forest lives.

Maid of the Forest

Two big pots of Septemberbossie, once lived outside the garden gate, are guardians of the step from the East Patio down to the garden. The garstigly green wall outside the kitchen is a quiet mocha to match the house at last! On the table my purple Streptocarpus waits. The lime tree has moved and we'll add a tall blue pot in its focal place.

Septemberbossie. East Patio
Washing Pergola or Cornish Stripe

On the West Patio and Rose Courtyard my blue bench shelters under a lime tree with hundreds of buds. Love the smell of citrus blossom as they begin to open. Brachylaena obligingly flashes silver and green thru the window. Grewia lavender star has a first lonely flower. Corycium wild orchid I dug up from our Porterville garden, has survived moving and sent up a bud!

Brachylaena, Grewia
lime tree, Corycium

I have planted dozens of Lachenalia rubida from pots into the Terraforce wall. Probably not good to dig them up with leaves growing, but that way I can sort out - - - Lachenalia, Albuca, Freesia, Melasphaerula hordes, hmmm dunno but we'll put those in a separate pot and see.

Karoo Koppie and the verge

South African shade-loving Crassula multicava. Mexican Echevieria chosen for the pink leaves, not the queasy yellow flowers. Burnt orange Kalanchoe from Madagascar.

Crassula multicava, Echevieria on the right
Kalanchoe

An enthusiastic volunteer, I am expecting large and tall daisies. Sparaxis harlequin flower. Almost yellow vygie.

Mystery daisy volunteer
Sparaxis, vygie

In front of the bay window I have planted a wild olive sapling from our previous garden. 'When I grow up, I'm going to look like the one across the road with gnarled branches' for Garden Bloggers Foliage Day

Our olive and
when I grow up across the road

I'll be planting the blue and white side while the Ungardener builds his pond. Love the way the path winds in a double curve from the carob to the lemon and olive.

Woodland Walk and pond

All Proudly South African for Wildflower Wednesday (except Hibiscus, Echevieria and Kalanchoe). We moved here in November last year and the Garden Year unfolds month, by month.


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