Our False Bay garden in November

by Diana Studer

 - gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

 

For my glass Advent wreath I take inspiration from what my garden offers each year. 2021 is an exotic trio. Coprosma repens from New Zealand - creamy green leaves to fill the gaps. White Iceberg roses (from Central Asia), because who can resist roses?! Bright colours in Alstroemeria Inca lilies from Chile.

 

Advent Wreath with exotic flowers

Taken out to daylight for a photo by Froggy Pond. Come Through my Garden Gate with Sarah Down by the Sea in Dorset.

 

Advent Wreath 2021

Posy for my sister who has no garden of her own. Fragrant Pelargonium leaves. And rosebuds that she can enjoy watching unfold. Bunch of lavender since she likes purple flowers.

 

Garden posy with rosebuds

South Africa has a dozen golden buds on this branch. Thuli Madonsela has ten pink buds across the bush. Very rewarding from Ludwig's Roses.

 

South Africa
Thuli Madonsela

Our banana has had a baby, since we feed and water. Pebbles are visual protection against this gardener who stomped off the first attempt.

 

Banana has had a baby

My Cornish Stripe garden under the Washing Pergola Looked good this year with the blue / purple and white flowers I planned. My camera doesn't see what we do, sadly.

 

Cornish Stripe under the Washing Pergola

This is exploding with arms of vivid blue in the centre, lolling over the path then trimmed for a fleeting vase. Anchusa capensis. Cape forget me not. Now it is in my garden it seeds itself. Rough leaves for borage family with leaves as spinach and edible flowers

 

Anchusa capensis
Cape forget me not

It took me a few days, across a few hours, to cut back the dwarf papyrus Cyperus prolifer at Froggy Pond. I need one of those 'elderly' gardener seats. Cut, clipped smaller, and mulched into the garden. I have cleared the paved edge - but there is way too much covering half the surface. And it has eaten the blue waterlily. We need to cut back trees, shrubs, hedge on verge...

 

Froggy Pond with dwarf papyrus trimmed

The Ungardener is nurturing and observing this carton nest of cocktail ants. We have had 3 batches of flying ants. They harvest the plant fibre as they need it - a gentle and precise topiary, bite, by bite.

 

Cocktail ants flying

White spotted chafer beetles seem to have been taught to Eat White Flowers to Grow their White Spots. Iceberg roses. Bauhinia bowkeri carrying its UNeaten flowers high against the sky. On the verge great white trusses of honey-scented (? smells ... funky to me) Buddleja saligna which are clearly equally enticing (also for bees, moths and then robins)!

 

Chafer beetles
for White Spots Eat White Flowers

We have two Psychotria capensis - one in the boundary corner which gets more sun and bloomed first, and this one against the shady South wall of the house to hide the rain tank. Lemoenbos for perfectly lemon yellow flowers.

 

Psychotria capensis

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Pictures by Diana Studer

of Elephant's Eye on False Bay

 

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