home
subscribe
advertise
contact
nelson mandela bay's family lifestyle
author:
brenda plakonouris & kim tucker
indigenous summer garden
photography:
iky's photographic
issue:
8, summer 2008
Brenda Plakonouris and Kim Tucker have been guiding us into the magnificence of indigenous gardening – introducing us to this exciting world, encouraging us to apply a new philosophy when we put our fingers in the soil. In this 'summer' article they share some more practical information and advice on making our own garden, the easy to maintain and beautiful living space we want it to be. As we approach the end of a wonderful indigenous gardening year and prepare our gardens for this area's fabulous summer, let us appreciate the natural environment that we are slowly creating. Gardening is never something that shows overnight results, but hopefully you have been successful with the removal of your alien invader species and have seen the improvement in your garden surroundings. Generally this is our rainy time of the year and therefore a strong growth period. This means that you should arm yourself with your secateurs and small hoe. Examine your plants and shrubs and clip away any unruly growth, keeping in mind and enabling good airflow between the plants, during the hot summer months. With your hoe, you need to remove the now vigorously growing weeds. It is always best to remove young weeds, so that they do not rob your plants of the much needed moisture during the summer. While in the garden, consider adding an organic fertilizer to all your plants and check to make sure that your choice of mulch is secure and ready for the long hot summer days. We cannot emphasize the importance of mulching your plants, as this area has strong winds and excessive temperatures on the way. During October we had the privilege of being part of the Sherwood Garden Centre Spring Festival, which ran for 10 days. The highlight of the show, was the Kirstenbosch Chelsea flower exhibition. This year's display was, as usual, awarded a gold medal (number 29) and the President's award for the most creative display out of 800. The theme for this year's display was 'THE HEAT IS ON'! David Davidson and Ray Hudson have not only created a visual wonderland of the Cape floral kingdom's gems, but also showed the devastating effect global warming is having on our plants. Along with 10 other landscapers, we had the wonderful opportunity to build a landscaped garden at the show. As 100% Indigenous, we built a garden using our strongly held principals of a low carbon footprint garden. Essentially this means that we try and use only material provided by nature, ie. soil, rocks, plants and stones, as we have been encouraging you. We also kept our plant choice to Eastern Cape endemic (local) species, as we wanted to introduce the public to the concept of an endemic indigenous garden. As such our plant choice celebrated our “local is lekker” philosophy. Our premise is that a successful garden needs to be built in an environmentally friendly way and be in line with the seasons. One of the show stoppers that drew a lot of attention was our Ornithogalum dubium, our local chincherinchee. Most people are familiar with the white Western Cape species and were fascinated to find out that we have our very own local one. Another plant such as the Gasteria acinaciafolia, which occurs along our coastal belt, allowed us to introduce the public to the aloe-like Gasteria species. We demonstrated that a water wise and low maintenance garden can be colorful and useful. We also chose plants like the Bulbine fructescens, which is very pretty, provides color and also has great healing qualities - if you rub the sap from the leaves of this plant on any small cuts, grazes, bites or burns it will speed up healing. The Sherwood Spring Festival proved to be a wonderful platform for meeting the public and sharing our love for our unique piece of the Eastern Cape. It was an opportunity to make a display of everything we've been encouraging you to apply in your own garden and it inspired so many people to keep it local, this summer. This is the season when you will 'reap' a lot of the benefits of transforming your own garden into an indigenous wonderland – and as you noticed, while those who opted for old-style, non-indigenous gardening are spending their fortunes and excessive time on creating and maintaining those gardens, indigenous gardeners enjoy doing some 'guiding of their garden' and enjoy them for the rest. It really is the most fabulous, to have a 100% indigenous garden.
| articles
| homes
| life
| art
| sport
| well-being
| travel
| education
| food
| relationships
| money
| motoring
| fashion
| gardening
| horses
| books
| kids
| faith
| community
| NGO directory
