September in the garden

September is here and it is now officially spring. The weather is starting to warm up and even though I did move a couple of plants last weekend; I can now fully get back in the garden and get some work done.  We could very possibly still have some cold weather this month and maybe into next month but hopefully we don't get any jumps back into winter weather. 






























Hibiscus 'Sylvia Goodman'
This Hibiscus has been growing in a large pot since we bought it a few years ago.  We had to move the pot a couple of months ago and found it did not want to move - a large root had grown through the drainage hole straight into the ground below.  The root had to be cut off and the plant did not like that! It is about 1.5m high or more and it is now time to plant it into the ground and I am hoping that all goes well with the transplanting as it is not an easy Hibiscus to find.

Hibiscus 'Orange Lantern'
This Hibiscus has been growing in a pot for 2 years and it has now been transplanted into the garden.  This is another Hibiscus that is hard to find.


Alcantarea vinicolor
This is a brilliant red in colour now, the photo does not show this properly.  It does need the cobwebs to cleaned off and the old parent plant to be removed from the middle.  I am going to try to divide the pups on this one soon.

Flowering this month........

 

 

............in the Front Garden

Eranthemum pulchellum
I went for a walk around the front garden last weekend and found this one in flower for the first time - very exciting.  I love the white markings on the bracts and the flowers are gorgeous.  It does look like a cool growing cottage garden plant instead of a tropical plant.

Lobelia laxiflora
The first time flowering for this one. This is a small plant as I planted this about 6 months ago, it will end up around a metre high.

Abutilon thompsonii and Euphorbia 'Snowflake'

Abutilon thompsonii flowers

Calliandra haematocephala white flowered form

............in the Bottom Garden

 



Porphyrcoma pohliana
This plant comes in and out of flower throughout the year.  It does self seed but it hasn't been too bad here.  I just move the seedlings into other parts of the garden.
Sorry about the blurry bottom of this photo but there is a plinth and statue next to this plant on the left side of this photo and I couldn't get it in focus properly.

Peristrophe hyssopifolia aureo marginata 

 

 

Schaueria flavicoma 

 

 

 

...........in the Pavilion Garden

 

 A small flowered Cattleya

A large flowered Cattleya

 Three of my Dendrobium kingianum orchids in in flower

 

  

 

Dendrobium nobile in flower this morning

 Justicia brandegeeana Yellow Queen
This one is in flower all year.
 


Justicia brandegeeana variegated form
A gorgeous combination of flowers and variegated leaves. The leaves have been getting a lot more white on them over the last few months and I hope they continue like this through the warmer months.

 Ruellia macrantha
This is the first flower of the season.

One of my Spathiphyllums in flower

Pavonia x gledhillii
The flowers on this one are almost finished now, it has been in flower since June.  A very long lasting show of flowers and it will be back in flower in a few months 

.........in the Pool Garden

 

  



Vireya
An orange Vireya just starting to flower

Calliandra haematocephala
I have a few Calliandras in the garden and they grow well here.  This is the winter/spring flowering one.

Close up of flower 

 Russelia equisetiformis 'Coral Falls'
I have the Russelias growing around the waterfall behind the swimming pool.  I love the way the Russelias and the surrounding variegated Mondo Grass fall over, it reminds me of falling water. It does look good around the waterfall.  You can just see the red flowered one on the left hand side of the photo.

Russelia equisetiformis 'Lemon Falls'


Justicia brandegeeana
This one flowers all year.  I couldn't get far enough away from the flower to get a good photo as I would have ended up in the deep end of the pool - camera and all.

All the photos were taken in the late August or September except for the Hibiscus photos.

 Last weekend I went outside to get a few photos of some of the plants and when I went to open the top pool gate, I noticed that we had a couple of visitors in the pool.

New pool fencing

 Today the new glass pool fencing went in.  There was a lot of work to get to this stage, the arch over the old pool gate had to come down as it was in the way of new fence as we had to change the  angles a bit to accommodate the glass panels.  The arch is on the right side of the photo next to the pool filter box.  It had to be partially pulled apart to take the old posts of it.  The garden edging on both sides of the lawn had to be removed to make way for the glass fencing. 

When the concrete around the posts has set, there is going to be a lot of work to do.  The garden edging brickwork has to go back in on one side and the brick wall has to be built under the pool fencing to get the clearance right underneath the fence.  Then the brickwork goes back in on the other side where the curve of the garden has to be changed so that it meets up with the step that will go in front of the gate. The yard slopes downwards on this section of the garden so we have to change the height of the garden edging on this side, then we will raise the lawn section up higher to hide some of the height of the brick wall that will have to go under the fencing.   Lots of top soil and more turf  and it will look good in the end. 

Why the glass fencing?  It was the only way we could keep the statue and plinth in the corner, the pool arch and the Golden Cane palm.  The statue had no where else to go and we kind of like the arch. We wanted to keep this Golden Cane as we have to remove some palms and still have a Golden Cane palm in the top section to remove and I have to move the Dalechampia to another part of the garden - hope it makes it.