Pelargoniums and Margie

By Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

The second plant in my False Bay Dozen for Diana is the white pelargonium. When we sold our Camps Bay house and moved to Porterville my mother was already old and frail, but she wanted to see the town again (she remembered going to a spring flower show years before). My sister Margie brought mother to visit us. Mother brought me a gnarled little cutting which I carefully divided into 3 greenish bits. We waited and waited for our builder to start. Finally I could start planting the first bed outside our new front door.

White pelargonium from my mother

Broad leaves of white pelargonium

When we moved to False Bay, I brought the pot that stood in the shade between the two ash trees, for cuttings against the boundary wall at the Washing Pergola. The leaves are fragrant if the washing lands on them. White flowers remind me of butterflies, or sheets on the washing line of the fynbos fairies.

Pelargoniums I found in the False Bay garden

In this garden I found a huge shrub with tiny pink clusters of flowers. A deep red and a raspberry ripple ivy pelargonium - succulent leaves with a fresh fragrance. A flaming scarlet and an exuberant lipstick pink with maroon splodges.

Pelargoniums
grown from seed
or from our Camps Bay, then Porterville gardens

From Porterville I bought a salmon pelargonium which once came from my mother's Camps Bay garden. Two pink ones have delicate markings (seed from Kirstenbosch) one with full leaves, the other oak-leaved. Pelargonium tomentosum is shade-loving and has minty leaves with delicate white flowers that float above the leaves. Succulent pelargonium on the Karoo Koppie is flourishing. Nutmeg pelargonium has enchanting flowers and kidney-shaped nutmeg scented leaves.

Sadly the cuttings from the large pink for my vase flowers haven't survived?

Pelargonium fulgidum
Cape Columbine July 2010

Tiny red flowers on Pelargonium fulgidum is another that my mother loved. The picture is a wild plant at Cape Columbine.

Pelargonium Valentine October 2009

Pelargonium Valentine in Porterville shows the full magic.

Melianthus major

October's False Bay Dozen for Diana was Melianthus. I look forward to your November choices.

Pam in the Pocono Mountains of Pennnsylvania. From my Alstroemeria to her ZZ plant!

Donna in upstate New York. Blanket flower -  this plant could blanket the ground with drifts of the flower. One Native American legend tells the story of when an excellent weaver died, her grave was covered with flowers as brilliantly colored as the blankets she made.

From Beth in Wisconsin the fascinating cup plant. 

Heart stones from Margie

Margie and I shared a love of rocks and stones. When I told her I read a novel about heart stones, and I'd never seen one - she gave me these two.

Four sisters

We are four sisters. My earliest memory of Margie is the story she loved to tell me. (My sisters are all older than me, my nieces all closer to my age, I am between). When my first niece was born and Margie's friends came to admire the new baby, someone asked almost 5 me, and who are you? Margie enjoyed saying Diana drew herself up to her full height of two bricks and a tickey and declared I, am The Aunt!

My sister introduced herself to our friends as I am an artist. That is how I choose to remember her. The seagull she bought when we visited an artist's studio. Her Maid of the Forest sculpture lighting up the garden. Blue raku pot displayed in the kitchen. A watercolour of Table Mountain she once painted to the delight of the Ungardener's parents. Pastel portrait of me as a girl.

After my mother died, my sister battled with breast cancer. She moved to Devon to be with her daughter - and we are deeply grateful that they had some good time together. We have been keeping vigil. Less than 48 hours after Chocolat went over the Rainbow Bridge, it was my sister and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Margie's story in flowers from my garden

I told my sister's story in a bunch of flowers from our garden. Coprosma for our father and our New Zealand roots. Lavender for our English mother and her garden posies. Inca lilies and Bougainvillea for my niece who lives in New Mexico, roses and lavender for my niece in Devon. Red Bougainvillea and blue Gilia for my oldest sister, purple Mexican sage and white roses for my youngest sister. Dusty Miller from the Mediterranean for Margie's love of Greece, seven weeks fern for happiness in Knysna. Pelargoniums from my South African wild flowers.

Eleven eleven. Flanders poppies in my garden. Granpa Yeates.

Pictures by Diana and Jurg Studer
of Elephant's Eye on False Bay

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