“One of the best things about a garden, large or small, is that it is never finished. It is a continual experiment.” – Margery Bianco
The imminent visit of a garden club to one’s garden concentrates the mind wonderfully. It makes one spot all sorts of glaring faults that have somehow gone unnoticed.
Two huge daisy bushes, greatly outgrowing their allotted space in my terraforce wall, were the first to catch the eye.
I am tender hearted about tossing out plants that bloom so willingly, but fortunately my husband likes nothing better than to lop and chop. In no time at all, the Grim Reaper had consigned the pair to the compost heap, revealing a horrifying number of pockets of bare earth to be filled.
This - at the height of summer, with drying winds alternating with sweltering days - was something of a challenge. The replacements needed to be small, drought-resistant, sun-loving perennials.
I chose the gaily-coloured South African gazania and three North Americans – rudbekia, yellow coreopsis and gaillardia, also known as the Indian blanket plant.
To offset this burst of fiery colour, I added mauve French lavender and statice (now known as limonium), which echoed the river of trailing Convolvulus mauritanicus already in place.
While at the nursery, I saw an irresistible Purple Delight agapanthus. Of medium height, with smallish leaves, this newish cultivar quickly joined my purchases, to be followed by Alice, a double agapanthus bearing bright blue flowers. Double flowers, I was told, are not pollinated by bees, and therefore last longer, which gives Alice an advantage.
One of the delights of my summer garden is fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), which has abundant umbels of lacy yellow flowers and feathery leaves. It springs up irrepressibly along our waysides, self-seeding itself generously, which causes some people to refer to it as a weed.
My plants have restricted themselves to my garden’s boundaries, where height is not a problem. Bronze fennel (Foeniculum purpurascens) is smaller, with very attractive foliage, and not nearly as ubiquitous.
Fennel thrives in rocky, sandy soils and is a most undemanding plant. It should not be grown near the similar dill, because the two tend to hybridise easily, or coriander.
Fennel leaves give a sweet, aniseed flavour to fish dishes, and its seeds do the same for butters, breads, cheeses, sauces and chutneys.
Medicinal teas made of seeds or leaves of fennel are said to aid digestion and relieve constipation. They also have slimming qualities as they tend to pre-digest and break down oily fats.
Indeed, looking down from my balcony on this exuberant, pretty and useful herb, I feel honoured to have it as an uninvited guest in my garden. - Cape Argus