In The Southern Hemisphere …..Spring Means Open Gardens

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Open Gardens allow entrance to some of the finest private gardens and occurs only once or twice a year. The entrance fee is usually directed to the owner’s preferred charity. Each is a wonderful opportunity to see gardens that are often behind houses  you’d never get to visit. Generally the owners have spent months getting their garden ready for inspection. Often they are in the garden when it is open to the public and can identify plants and ideal growing conditions and talk about the evolution of their garden. The city garden above was calm and green and peaceful. Beautiful.

The rest of the gardens featured were on the Ferguson Valley Open Garden Trail through Boyanup, Lowden and the Ferguson Valley. We were blessed with lovely weather, good pub food and interesting gardens.

The gardens are in rural areas and were various sizes but all bigger than a suburban block in the city. Several fronted lakes or river beds . They were all great to visit.

The gardens varied in age, with one evolving over the past ten years and others being much older and added onto at various times.

The older gardens grew mostly European plants, some were a blend of both European and native Australian plants, like this bottle brush flower.


Roses grow so well in this region. Not photographed but all the gardens had vegetable gardens, mostly in raised beds. There is very good soil in this locale and the gardens are green and lush.

Some of these gardens were on a grand scale, some were gardens which had just grown to fill the available space.  Scent and colour everywhere. Most of the gardens had plants for sale, many had Devonshire teas. (Coffee and tea, scones with jam and cream) All enjoy gorgeous vistas across rural countryside.

There’s a mix of native West Australian plants and traditional imported garden plants.

Beautiful banksia, related to proteas.

It was really interesting to see what other people had planted, especially in shaded or windy areas and to see how they made the most of available water supplies.

Today is Sesame Street Day, established in 2009 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the program. Sesame Street was devised to promote literacy in the USA and has been declared amazingly successful.

 

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