Welcome to this summer edition of our newsletter. Hope you are having a wonderful time in your garden with family and friends over the festive season.

Since the last newsletter Karen and I have spent time walking and travelling around Japan. Whilst there we had the opportunity to visit many beautiful gardens.

This means that we have missed seeing plants in our garden in bloom over October and the early part of November. So it was a pleasure to have a member of our group, Brenda Martin send in some photos and a report about her garden. Thanks Brenda.

October – Plant of the Month – Brenda Martin’s garden

After all the rain we have had, and all the cold and windy weather, my garden has excelled itself this year!
I moved to Frankston South about 4 years ago and promptly ripped out all the lawn (no mowing for me!) and all the roses and most of the exotic plants. Replaced by some large rocks and mulch, dotted with native grasses, wattles, westringias, grevilleas and a few eucalypts as a basis.
Over the past few years I have bought any natives that appealed to me and put them in wherever I fancied. Somehow it seems to have worked and when, finally, we had a sunny day this October, I went out to the garden and was amazed and delighted. All the shrubs were in full bloom, bees, hover flies and butterflies were everywhere, and even the clown-like New Holland Honeyeaters, Spinebills and Wattlebirds were busily collecting nectar –  a ‘living’ garden. It made my day.
Some of my favourite plants in flower at the moment are:

Alyogyne  huegelii (mauve blue), several Correas, including Chef’s Cap and Fat Fred,
Eremophila nivea

Grevillea ‘Ned Kelly’, G. Intricata, G. ‘Superb’, and others.

A brilliant pink Leptospermum, flowers covering the whole bush (don’t know which one), Myoporum floribundum, weeping over the pond, Thomasia pygmaea (a delight, especially after our talk recently) and Ricinocarpus pinifolius (Wedding Bush) – pictured below.

Give me Aussie plants any day!

Plant of the month – November

Returning home from Japan it was exciting to see what was flowering in our garden as in Japan autumn colours were all the go. A relatively new section of our ever developing garden was flowering well. Many plants for the first time. Well done to our Melaleuca wilsonii, M. armillaris, Isopogon cuneatus, Hymenosporum flavum (native frangipani), Dampiera trigona and Banksia blechnifolia but one other stood out. Also flowering for the first time since we planted it was an Eremophila makinlayi, from friends in Melton, so it was an easy choice as my plant of the month. (Not so easy was the removal of many weeds that had sprung up in our absence however!)

Plant of the month – December

Many are excited about their Christmas tree in December but we were excited by the beautiful white flowering of two of our plants. The first was Melaleuca linarifolia (Seafoam) which is at the the bottom of the driveway in a heavy clay situation, surviving where previously two other less hardy plants had failed to their detriment. The second was a Myoporum floribundum (struck from a plant table cutting by Karen) with its lovely weeping branches. Sadly the hot spell has knocked out the flowers of the Melaleuca seafoam so here is a picture of the tougher weeping Myoporum floribundum.

Meetings and excursions

During our absence in October we missed two activities. The first was a visit to Gidja Walker’s in Rye on October 1st. Fortunately Ray Turner has sent me some photos. Here are a few of the photos for those who also may have missed this excursion. Thanks Ray!

Our guest speaker for the meeting on October 18th was Trevor Blake. Despite having what was described as ‘technical difficulties’ he delivered an informative talk about the Malvaceae family. If like me you weren’t sure of Malvaceae family members think Hibiscus and Alyogyne and you’ll be starting down the right garden path!

On November 15th, just after returning home we were lucky enough to attend a talk by the entertaining and informative Cathy Powers. In her ‘Grasslands and their Flora’ talk she was able to make many comparisons between grasslands in her native USA and Australia. Her talk was supported by a lovely PowerPoint presentation. Fortunately she didn’t have any technical difficulties!

APSV President

2017

Our committee is meeting on January 9th with the aim of finalising our calendar of events for 2017 so stay tuned. Remember you can click the Like button or make a Comment if you wish. In the meantime Happy New Year and enjoy your garden during summer.