The Colorado Bed

My Australian Gardening Calendar labels July as "a month for garden design", and we've been doing just that.

Last December our huge apple tree fell down, converting a shady garden bed into a sunbaked crust over summer and leaving us with a blank canvas (well, potentially blank), thus:
The prime consideration in our design plan has been that the bed sits on the North side of our deck, so we want something that is both aesthetic and, like the apple tree, tall and deciduous (the usual shade-in-summer, sun-in-winter factor). I am happy to be corrected, but our requirement for tallness rules out most edible plants in a functional form- the apple tree's out-of-reach fruit was just a possum magnet. B and I quickly decided that this could be the spot for our long awaited "aspens".


As I have shown, aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) are for us a pure Colorado icon, as much as the columbine. White trunks, green leaves in summer, red or yellow in autumn, and bare white trunks in the snow.

The only problem with P. tremuloides aspens is that they don't grow at elevations below 1500 feet: they have no chance in Melbourne! There are other aspen varieties, but I suspect they're not really suitable for the small spot we have and besides, they're not "our" aspens.

So on to Plan B, silver birches (Betula pendula). There are heaps in our area, and with white trunks they are quite aspen-ish to our mind. When we were looking for a house to buy a few years back, one came up with a clump of silver birches, and we decided our future garden would have silver birches. In fact, they became a joke between B and I: until the apple tree's demise we would have had to clear some other garden bed for our silver birches but couldn't decide where. When I'd consult B about other garden design issues, his reply has been "I don't mind-I just want my silver birches". So it's quite exciting to finally have them in the works!

The apple tree's demise has sparked quite a domino effect in the rest of the garden. In the first place the soil in the bed is horrid, so we'll be digging in loads of manure and compost. I've already transplanted the long-suffering rhubarb to its third home, and to make room for the birches we have moved the Mexican orange blossom and the port wine magnolia to one side of the bed and the daisy to the lawn border. The two camelias were sent to our South side yard, which will now be an official acid-lovers bed (despite its own problems).

The plan is then to plant silver birches across the bed, so that their trunks will be a feature to look at. The fence will be covered in a creeper (probably Jasmine as we love the scent), and if I can ever get my cuttings to take root, we'll have a Rosemary hedge, which will tie in with the bed on the south side of the deck. I'm also in the process of ordering blue columbine seeds fron an American company, so the plan is to have wildflowers around our "aspens".

This is one of my biggest garden design job ever, so I'm dying to see the finished product!!

Apple and rhubarb crumble is off the menu.

I don't think I ever mentioned our apple tree. The reason being, B and I decided it was a "Crap Apple" tree (no typo). Most of the fruit has been sour, and only good for chutney or cricket. It was also structurally a disaster- I don't quite know how, but after about half a metre, the trunk bent to around two o'clock, hanging over the fence. On the positive side, it made the tree an interesting feature, both visually and for visiting kids with a need to climb. When we moved in we were concerned by a large (30cm diameter) branch that was clearly dead and had it removed. We also discussed removing the whole tree with the ne

ighbours as it overhung their driveway. However, the neighbours were strongly in favour of retaining the tree, probably because it was large enough to screen out our upstairs windows from their back lawn and deck. So we kept the tree and I found an apple chutney recipe (Nigella's) to use up the windfall fruit.

A few nights ago, our plans for a 2010 chutney vintage were dashed by a ring on the doorbell. It was our neighbours announcing that the tree had fallen on the fence.

A couple of palings had been snapped, but the crossbars appeared to be bearing the weight of the trunk, so we debulked as much of the tree as we could reach to reduce the weight, and in the morning I rang around town trying to find a tree chopping service which could come immediately. And a couple of hours later, up rocked the "team", which consisted of a huge truck with a chipper-trailer attachment and six men who ran the tree demolition like clockwork.

Two chainsaws, a heap of chipping and a leaf blower to clear the sawdust from the paths and in no time our tree was driven off to start its new life as mulch! Needless to say, both boys were fascinated by the whole process! (And yes, I can recommend Taylors- we've used them before and this time they accommodated my rapid service request.)

Unfortunately, our long-suffering rhubarb had been relocated to the shade of the apple tree, and suffered collateral damage at the hands size 13 feet of one of the chainsaw operators! Fingers crossed it has yet another life up its sleeve.

The question is now, what should replace the apple tree? It's to the north of our deck, so deciduous seems like a good plan: the usual shade-in-summer-sun-in-winter logic. Fast growing would please the neighbours so they can resume whatever they did in the privacy of their screened yard (no, they're not that type of neighbour). And given that the view from our side of the fence will only be the lower three metres, I am thinking "interesting trunk" would be best. Although part of me thinks we should replace a semi-edible plant with another edible, the reality is that we would like the bulk of the tree to be way up high and out of reach, so any fruit would just end up feeding possums and bats.

We are leaning towards a small stand (a copse?) of silver birches, as judging by how common silver birches are in our area we figure they must be well-suited to the local conditions. We won't be planting until the autumn, so in the meantime other suggestions are welcome! In the meantime, what I had been using as a shady bed is copping a heap of sun. Mulch, mulch, mulch is my interim plan!

Apologies for the backdated post: this all happened just before we headed off to Sweden, so I never quite pulled the photos and text together!

Lazarus of the Garden

In awarding the prize for the plant with the most impressive recovery from a near-death experience, the result is tied between:

Lasiandra (Tibouchina)

This was planted in a poor spot by the garden's previous owners, and suffered there for two years. It seemed that the summer heat wave was too much, and all the leaves dropped off. After a couple of months I decided to remove the stick to make room for a lime tree, but just as I was about to pull the Lasiandra out, I spotted new shoots. By now my garden plans had moved on from Lasiandras, so my shooting stick was removed to a new location, and the shoots promptly died off. After several more months of playing possum, there are now four new shoots. Talk about a survivor!

Rhubarb
Soon after we moved here, I planted two rhubarb plants. Soon after I realised that the soil around them was water-repellant, and over two summers the rhubarb repeatedly died off and resprouted. I confess that when stems came up I was not shy about picking them, and as well as this there was the occasional squashing by an errant football (or football boot). When I decided to dig my asparagus trench I found one leafless crown, which I replanted in a better position.

I thought my rhubarb had lived the last of its lives, but look what popped up!