November is here, the month when the garden comes together. Or should. This year things are quieter than usual although longer days and milder nights have brought out lots of flowers, even if on the small side.
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Seeing the garden burst into bloom is a handy reminder to note irises, poppies, columbines, lavenders, any plants that produce variations in flower colour or shape that you'd like to propagate, or at least remember where they are, and label them clearly.
I could almost hear the shout of "Yesss!" coming from gardeners across the land one recent Friday evening when Jane Edmondson, on ABC's Gardening Australia, demonstrated a novel and brilliant idea for DIY plant labels.
Jane collects small pebbles with one flat side that she paints white and writes on in pencil. (Check out on Gardening Australia iView: September 27, 2019). I was ultra-pleased when she extolled the virtues of pencil, something I'm constantly rabbiting on about. Oil marker pens are useless, the writing is illegible within a season but pencil being graphite lasts indefinitely.
Having carefully labelled my dahlia tubers in pencil last autumn, Jane would be proud of me, I'm now dusting them down ready to plant. They survived winter happily in slightly damp vermiculite, not so damp as to cause them to sprout, and I have seven tubers of Bishop of Llandaff, dark red singles with glossy purple leaves which should make a nice show next autumn.
I can't truthfully recommend dahlias for the Mediterranean garden as they need summer irrigation, but they do well in pots so I'll keep them going at least for now.
Collecting dahlia tubers prompted me to check the back of the fridge when I'd secreted another bag of damp vermiculite, the one containing seeds of my beautiful Chinese quince tree (Cydonia sinensis).
To my incredulous delight, I found dozens of teeny sprouts. I gazed at them in awe, moved by the eternal miracle of life from something desiccated and apparently dead.
Lastly, November pruning. Admiring a magnificent purple Wisteria sinensis at Miss Traill's House, a National Trust property in Bathurst, I asked local gardening guru Spencer Harvey how to prune it, he has forgotten more about gardening than I can ever hope to learn.
"Drastically," he said, advice dear to the heart of all pruning-saw loving blokes. "Be ruthless. Wait till flowering is over and new shoots are about a metre in length, normally in late November or early December, then cut back to two buds. That's all there is to wisteria."
My steps, pruning shears and alpha male of the household are poised for action.
Fiona will open Rockley Gardens & Art Heritage Garden Trail, November 9-10. Entry $10 pp, eight glorious Tablelands gardens including historic Bumnamagoo, whose soapstone homestead (c. 1827) is one of the earliest west of the Blue Mountains.
Opening 9am, Saturday November 9, Rockley School of Arts, Hill St., Rockley. Details Kerry Mahony, mahonykerry4@gmail.com
