Bonquet
After all the hard work shaping and planting out this garden I decided to name it “The Bonquet”.
At around the time I 'invented' this garden I fell in love with Dawn & Saunders T.V. series “Let them eat Cake”, so I couldn’t really call it anything else. To be honest just saying it's name sparks a bit of a grin, thus feeding my warped sense of humour.
This garden is roughly triangular in shape and is planted with a Chilean Wine Palm in each triangular corner with an outer boarder of purple agapanthus. This garden has two hot pink single flowering Oleanders; one each side of the seatinig area which is in the middle. There were originally two South African Cabbage trees or cussonia paniculatas; one of each, each side of the sitting area also, but unfortunately one perished after a servre frosty winter a few years ago. Instead of replacing it we opted to put some sort of sculpture there instead. Paul made up a tripod like feature with a cast iron pot hanging from it. We added a rusty bird of prey sculpture in swooping mode, to give the area a bit of atmosphere. Most recently there are plantings of violets, euphorbias, winter hot pokers, day lillies, and African daisies as ground covers in this area. In the Winter snow drop bulbs pop up for a bit of seasonal cheer.
The inner border of the Bonquet sitting area is made up of a medium growing green liriope muscari as it grows well and is quite hardy and flowers mid Summer. I have also just planted quite a few sedums here too, as they seem to enjoy the heat of the hot summers here. Just behind that is another edge of winter flowering hot poker which almost goes completely dormant in the hot months of the summer. This particular variety I call 'J9' (as my beautiful gardening friend Janine gave me my first clump which she purchased from Mr. Norgate). This little gem of a hot poker has been such a winner and so easy to propagate it has become one of the most structual elements of the entire estate. Through the dull winter months at Itchy Palms Gardens it flowers prolifically from late Autumn till late Spring attracting several varieties of native honey eating birds
There is an arch way over the entry of the Bonquet of honey suckle. We originally tried golden chain trees on the arch but as they were demolished by caterpillars each year we decided to take them out.