The last wedding of the season approaches next weekend and the gardens are looking good. The lawns have responded to the March rains and autumn fertilizing and are looking beautifully green. Unfortunately I fear that it was too cold when we applied nematodes recently to combat the lawn grubs as a fox has been digging up grubs merrily. The Plectranthus ciliatus has been putting on a wonderful show and is worth keeping under control for this reason. This plectranthus tip roots readily from it’s hairy stems and so can be a little invasive but not hard to pull back. 
Camellia sassanqua Setsugekka
The windflowers and sassanqua camellias are flowering, the camellias will continue to flower well into the winter. We have arborists working on the Pyrus in our car park. They are pruning them back off the buildings, raising them a little to allow cars easier parking underneath and thinning them so that the winds will pass through. They have grown well in a less than ideal situation and have become wind sails; catching the wind and being rocked more than we would like in a car park. We save as much of the wood chip as we can and have started mulching our garden beds including the bed at the front of the Gazebo. Here we have laid cardboard down over a particularly bad patch of onion weed and mulched on top of the cardboard. A visitor told me I need to cover onion weed for 7 years! The Rosa mutabilis is in this section of the garden. It is still only small but I find the flowers and their fading exquisite.
gardens50plus 