Déjà vu

First day of March yesterday and although I'm still feeling groggy from winter I got stuck in did some tidying up in the garden. A few plants got trimmed then I turned my attention to the Kniphofia caulescens we have on the third and first raised bed near the koi pond.

On the third raised bed

They look their worst in the latter part of winter and always needs to be given a good trim before they start romping again in growth come the warmer months. Seems simple enough a task to do, and it is but you could easily find yourself spending over an hour on each plant.

On the first raised bed....scruffy!

And whilst doing so it has given me a sense of deja vu, like I've done this before. Of course, exactly the same task at roughly the same time each year. I suppose any seasonal routine can make you feel that way. The other odd thing about it though is like I felt like I travelled back in time, and even got reminded of what my thoughts were whilst doing the same task a year ago, and the year before that. Odd...

Anyway back to the present both Kniphofias have done reasonably well over the winter and are looking slightly less scruffy as in previous winters. Still there were loads of dead material to remove before it got to the stage of how it was on the photos.

Coming from the mountainous regions of South Africa (also commonly known as Lesotho Red Hot Poker) they do well in full sun with very good drainage and appreciates extra watering during the summer. In the winter it prefers to be on the dry side to sail through fine as it is prone to rotting if it gets extra hydration during the colder months. It does however tolerate most of our wet winters here as long as they have that all important good drainage.

What they tend to look like in the summer...

Like where we have it, on raised beds. The pokers they send out are a bonus but their best features are their blue and succulent looking foliage and habit that makes them look more like aloes in the summer. An aloe look alike and hardy too, nice!

Mark :-)

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The Three Pokers

Usually we only have one a year...

It started with this one and we though this would be the only one...

For the first time, this year we'll have three!

The two others quickly followed. Now we have a threesome!

Kniphofia northiae

Three pokers, three times the plant fun!

Mark :-)

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That Giant Poker

I was inspired by Loree's post about her Tetrapanax 'Rex' which made me think of what other plants I can recommend that gets big in a relatively short amount of time and never fails to make a statement in a garden...

Kniphofia northiae

One of them would have to be the giant red hot poker, Kniphofia northiae...

It gets big, really big, sometimes up to a metre in height and spread in just one season and looking more like a giant, succulent aloe rather than a red hot poker. The longer you have it the taller it can go both upwards, forming a trunk, and outwards as it sends out more shoots to form a colony.

The flowers are a bonus but grow it more for its foliage and architectural form.

The long, heavy, and succulent leaves have a tendency to sprawl all over and can smother nearby plants so regular trimming down of leaves can be necessary. Or if space is not a problem give it a generous portion of it and watch it do its thing without anything else crowding it.

It has a tendency to go scruffy in the winter, much like most plants but in early spring before new growth kick starts give the old leaves a good trim like we did ours last weekend, as we do year in and out.

I quite like the way it looks trimmed like that but if you're not keen all the trimmed leaves will be replaced in no time at all as the weather warms up.

This giant poker will do well in a well drained spot in an aspect that is in full sun to light shade. It appreciates feeding and generous watering in the summer but good drainage in the winter is essential to prevent it from rotting which it can be extra susceptible with.

Put it in a prominent spot and watch it grow...

Mark :-)

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Autumn Buzz

Spring seems to have come in early this year and summer came in so late, albeit a short one too, and now it's autumn and the signs of this season are undeniably everywhere now. Leaves of several deciduous trees and shrubs are already changing colours whilst some have already shed their leaves with nothing left now but just bare stems and branches.

This particular Aloe polyphylla has done incredibly well this year. I re-potted it last spring (whilst watching Prince Will and Kate's wedding on TV) and it was a generous sized pot for it's size back then, with a two inch gap between the rim of the pot and the tip of the spines all around. It obviously appreciated being over potted and now it is much bigger than the pot and is around 16'' in diameter. Now with having so many bamboos in the garden it is inevitable that nearly all of the succulents we display here gather leaf litter on their crown at any point, but this aloe seems to have avoided it all along. One time I said to myself 'Autumn will be here once I see a red leaf falling onto it's crown'. And that's exactly what I found this morning and taken a photo of.

Agave attenuata - a tiny plant we bought back from Madeira, now it's starting to form a trunk

So what happened between spring and summer then if the latter came in so late here? Well, a long 'spring' I suppose, and I can't even remember a single sultry evening on the supposed to be 'summer' here until for a few days in early October. And now the warm spell is over the weather definitely feels autumnal now.

Cussonia spicata - gorgeous foliage but has to be overwintered indoors

It's a tricky time of the year especially if you're in the middle of a big project like we are. We prepared the garden as you would in the spring and come summer time it was pretty much able to fend for itself, with some routine maintenance of course, whilst we concentrated on our project. Now that autumn is here we have to primarily shift our attention again to the garden as we prepare it for the coming winter months.

Cassia marilandica - the hardy Cassia that comes back from the ground every spring (shame this photo turned out blurred!)

There's so much to do but nothing daunting enough to cause stress and nothing that we're unfamiliar with any more. Autumn is the messiest of the four seasons so it's mainly loads of tidying up in the coming weeks then putting up necessary protection on certain plants for the coming winter.

Dahlia 'Twyning's After Eight' - blooming away till the first frosts

One special thing that I do enjoy this time around is that I get to spend some time inspecting individual plants as I prepare them for winter, giving them a once over and assessing what sort of extra care that they'll need next year, or simply appreciating their beauty and how they have done so well in the past months.

And another thing, certain plants look their best and flower during autumn and I look forward to seeing them in this period every year, like toad lilies which I absolutely love for both its flowers and foliage. This one in particular is my favourite, Tricyrtis lasciocarpa.

Tricyrtis lasciocarpa

So, I've got lots more random musings to come up in the next few weeks as we prepare our garden for another winter. Meanwhile I shall relish myself (and you, our blog readers) with the beautiful flowers of Kniphofia thompsonii flowering for the first time in our (new) garden.

Kniphofia thompsonii

Mark

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