![Autumn flowering <i>Nerine fothergillii</i> “Major” likes good drainage and full sun. Autumn flowering <i>Nerine fothergillii</i> “Major” likes good drainage and full sun.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-agfeed/2066343.jpg/r0_0_1024_1428_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
AT LAST my temperamental nerine, N. fothergillii "Major", has flowered.
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I'd love to attribute this to the care and attention, not to mention dolomite, I've devoted to it but I'm forced to concede it was more likely the weather.
Nerines love a dry summer followed by plentiful autumn rain, and that's exactly what we've had this year.
N. fothergillii "Major" produces its leaves after flowering so it needs ground cover to look its best.
The purple flowers and finely cut, intense silver leaves of Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) look great with the Major's brick red blooms, but a pale pink sedum that seeded nearby is a mistake and will have to go.
The unexpected March rain brought lots of plants into flower and the garden is looking amazingly colourful for early April.
Varnished yellow autumn crocuses (Sternbergia lutea) make splashes of bright gold, perfect in front of one of my favourite gold leaved shrubs, the bright golden Mexican Orange Blossom Choisya ternata "Sundance".
A purple wallflower, Erysimum "Bowles Mauve", I cut to the ground in desperation in January is also covered in flowers, together with "Winter Cheer" with mauve flowers that fade to soft mallow and cream.
Wallflowers available from nurseries now are great value during winter, providing scent and colour for several months and are impervious to frost.
Nurseries also offer winter vegetable seedlings in April and they can be planted in the garden now for mid-winter harvesting.
Look for broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbages, leeks and onions.
Garlic corms can be planted now to harvest in spring, and kale can be sown in seed trays for transplanting in four to six weeks.
I'm fond of cabbage salad in winter so have put in a request to Bill for a large crop.
Cabbage is more interesting than it sounds.
A widespread part of the human diet for many thousands of years, it seems an unlikely plant to have dramatically changed our eating habits, yet the humble "greens" forced down our throats as children actually caused a revolution in food preservation.
Although Australia led the way refrigerating meat in the late 19th century, nobody had discovered how to freeze vegetables successfully.
Then in the early 1900s an American fur trapper, Clarence "Bob" Birdseye and his wife Eleanor were living with their son Kellogg (I'm not making this up) in a cabin in northern Canada, 400 kilometres from the nearest shop.
Eleanor missed her fresh vegies but Bob noticed the native North Canadians preserved fish, rabbit and duck by snap freezing them in Arctic temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius.
He cleverly grasped that instant freezing was the key to success.
Experimenting with cabbage stored in brine (the only green vegetable available to him) Bob was so successful when he returned south to the warmer winters of the United States, he built a small mobile freezer and snap froze his vegetables as he picked them.
They kept just as beautifully as the native Canadians' snap frozen game, so much so that three years later a large food processing company bought Bob's family firm.
In 1930 it was renamed Birds Eye and a new industry was born.
Mayfield Garden, 530 Mayfield Rd, Oberon, opens this autumn on April 22 to 24, April 26 to 30, and May 1 to 4 May, 9am to 4.30pm, last entry 3pm. Additional dates available for groups. Shuttle bus service, catering and live entertainment on weekends; light refreshments on weekdays. Entry $25, children 7-16 years $10, families (two adults, two children) $65. Contact (02) 6336 3131.
"Limberlost", Yetholme, and "Tranquility", Locksley, are open the weekend of April 12 to 13 April for Open Gardens Australia.