Garden Diary with Winter Colour

I love this time of year!

The Protea with lots of flowers...

So many things growing like crazy and so much colour :)

Protea flower thinking about opening

This past week the protea flowers started to open and will soon be showing us it's lovely fluffy insides, which I can't help but stroke on the way past!








Unfortunately, I have no idea what species of Protea this is, so if anyone knows, please let me know :)










We also have flowers on the camellia at the side of the driveway, which is always first to burst into bloom as it receives more light than the one behind the house.  This is a tree and unfortunately all the flowers at the moment are too high for me to get a picture, so will try again in a week once some of the lower buds have opened.  That is, if the ring-tail possums leave any intact as they seem to really enjoy eating them.

Euryops chrysanthemoides

On the nature strip, we have these Euryops chrysanthemoides which have been flowering for about 6 weeks now.  It's already had a light prune a couple of weeks ago and will probably receive another after flowering is over in a month or so.

Banksia spinulosa

In the front garden, we have various Melaleuca spp. that are starting to flower and also, one of my favourites, the Banksia spinulosa.


This draws so many birds into the garden at different times of year.  At the moment, the Red Wattle Birds are frequent visitors to this, the Melaleuca's and the Camellia.





Just to the side of the stairs at the front of the house, I've a few cuttings of succulents and various pellargoniums that I've (ahem) "liberated" from a variety of other places.  The Aloe vera you can see here are young suckers that I removed from the mother plant on the nature strip because it was starting to encroach on the road.  If you look carefully to the left of the centre rosette, you can see the start of this years' flowers :)

Aloe vera

Heirloom silverbeet, courtesy of Diggers Club :)

Elsewhere in the garden, we still have the silverbeet colour, though most of the leaves are now being munched nightly (and during the day thanks to the rain!) by slugs and snails.

Wild strawberries

Oh, and of course the wild strawberries under the lemon tree.  These have tiny little yellow flowers before producing tiny red fruit and are very popular with countless small mammals and birds, but pretty tasteless if you're human!

Feijoa sellowiana

The Feijoa on the other hand is producing masses of delicious fruit, in little groups of 3.  Where a possum or bird has taken one of the fruit, the others grow much larger and we've had a few whoppers this year.  It really seems to have benefitted from being heavily mulched and pruned at the end of last winter.

 Oh, I almost forgot.  We also have some surprise colour in the form of a brilliant yellow sunflower, one of many we have growing alongside our peas and broadbeans.



Yes, we have sunflowers flowering in June, when it's been very wet, there's been little sun and it's on the south side of the house, where winter sun is minimal.

This just makes it extra welcome :)