SALAD DAYS

In this cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt of southern Queensland frosts sometimes continue to torment gardeners into the second month of Spring, which they have done this year. Thus, I’ve had to wait patiently before planting the seed of many of my summer vegetable crops like sweet-corn, melons and cucumbers.

When we open our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B on 7/8th November this year for the Australian Open Garden Scheme we will have something special to show our garden visitors. I began planning these raised garden beds in February as a way of recycling three round sheets of a rusty corrugated iron, rain water tank. Now look at the result!

Loose leaf lettuce

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SPRING FOLIAGE

I began planting the trees that provide the foliage structure of our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B in 1994. Although it was then a young garden, reliant largely on annuals for colour, we were asked to open our garden in November 1997 for the Australian Open Garden Scheme as the selectors said it was inspirational. The gardens selected by the AOGS are not competition gardens. The purpose of the AOGS is to inspire more people to take up gardening. There is a misconception amongst many people that a garden should be well established  with mature trees before it can be placed on display. Yes, such gardens are wonderful places and give great pleasure, but often they daunt the new gardener who believes they will never achieve equal splendour.

Now this year, 7/8 November 2009, we will once more open our garden under the auspices of Australian Open Garden Scheme. Only the Radiata Pine trees I positioned at the northern end of the Remembrance Field of Flanders poppies have grown into tall trees. Other trees and shrubs are well grown and well spaced to continue their purpose of providing structure to the garden in the years ahead. As of yesterday, the first two red Flanders poppies appeared in the Remembrance Field. They will continue to double in number until the field is a blaze of red.

First poppies

The work of thinning the poppies has been completed. They will now bush up and grow past knee height within the month. Meanwhile the flowering perennials planted along the edges of pathways in the main garden have begun to bloom. Note the perennial Petticoat acquilegias beside this path. Also note the manner in which the Radiata Pine trees add depth to this view.

Garden path

Guests enter here at the front gate and proceed up the brick pathway to the office to immediately be confronted by the massed blooms of the Apple Blossom Hawthorn. There are over 1000 varieties of the crataegus plant, which are mostly thorny with red berries and much loved by birds.

Apple Blossom Hawthorn

I have two forms of this shrub in my garden. The other one has small white flowers. In common both plants are without thorns and have dark purple berries which are eaten throughout winter by the Satin Bower Birds who deposit their droppings throughout my garden. Lots of the plainer white flowering Hawthorn appear as seedlings and are easily transplanted, but it appears that the Apple Blossom Hawthorn doesn’t grow readily from seed.

White Hawthorn & Snowball bush

Between the white flowering, compact growing Hawthorn bush and the winter deciduous Snowball bush viburnum opulus which will reach its peak with huge white flowers by the third week of October, is one of the five Camellia Japonica trees I planted along the front of our house to provide evergreen winter foliage. When we bought this property there was one small green conifer, an extremely hardy specimen which self-seeds. Although I’ve never identified this particular conifer I took the opportunity to transplant several seedlings to other places with my garden. Not only do they provide evergreen colour throughout the year, the seed cones are much sought after by Australian parrots. As I was photographing my garden this morning a Red Wing parrot alighted beside me on one of these conifers.

Red Wing Parrot

Foliage for contrast

Close to the northern eastern corner of our house I’ve established low growing conifers behind which you can see the glossy green leaves of a Holly bush one of about 400 varieties of Ilex. Although this bush does set berries I’m never able to bring them indoors for Christmas decorations. In the December they are still green and by the time they redden up prior to winter the Satin Bower Birds arrive and enjoy a feast.

Contrasting foliage

This rocky portion of our garden beside the northern veranda was unsuitable for anything other than ivy type ground covers and shrubs which could get their roots down amongst the rocks. As the double glass doors of our lounge room and dining room look out onto this area, I terraced it so that the ground and veranda are at the same level. It has the effect of bringing the garden into the house. It is my favourite place to relax in an easy chair.

Northern veranda

Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.

This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.

Book Cover

To obtain Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine email Fay on helwig@halenet.com.au

Internationally it is available on the Amazon.com website.  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ACXQ0M/sr=8-1/qid=1244294755/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1244294755&sr=8-1&seller=

http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary

http://books.google.co.uk/

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SPRING FLOWERING SHRUBS

When I began the establishment the garden surrounding our home Das Helwig Haus B&B it was made up almost entirely of annuals for the first few years. Annuals are spectacularly colourful, but create an immense amount of work. Ground must be prepared, seedlings grown or purchased and then planted out. In the following months they require nurturing before finally they repay you with a riot of colour and perfume. Although considerably more expensive to establish, trees and shrubs are only planted once and as they grow add structure to gardens. I chose to plant a number of trees and shrubs – some for their foliage and others to give flowers. Underneath the trees or around the shrubs I planted an understory of bulbs or ground covers, only leaving a few areas, like borders for the annual positioning of seedlings.

Spanish bluebells under the Pussy Willow tree.

The Spanish bluebells are the last of my winter into spring flowering bulbs. Read the rest of this entry »

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FIRST SPRING FLOWERS

When I established the garden surrounding our home Das Helwig Haus B&B it was to ensure that there was something of interest in the garden at all times of the year for our visiting guests. My secondary desire was to be able to walk out into the garden at all seasons with a basket and secateurs to enable me to bring cut flowers into the house. My third goal was achieved thanks to the cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt which enabled me to grow northern Hemisphere flowers, seldom seen in Queensland gardens. It was only in later years that we began opening our garden in November, as we will do again this year for the Australian Open Garden Scheme on 7/8th November, and growing a Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies to bloom for 11th November. This morning I was able to go into my garden and gather the red foliage of an early flowering ornamental plum tree, the yellow flowers of forsythia and sprigs of of pussy willow. I displayed these on the unlit combustion wood stove in our dining room.

Early spring foliage

This has been an unusually warm spring and I no longer need to heat the house. Read the rest of this entry »

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AN ABUNDANCE OF TOMATOES

Although I grow organic tomatoes in my garden they are mostly for salad use. I find that the cherry tomatoes have less insect problems than the commercial varieties. My garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland is surrounded by commercial fruit orchards and vegetable farms. The down side of this is that all the insect pests manage to find breeding spots every year, hence the need for farmers to use insecticides and those pests are happy to move on to my unprotected crops. The plus side is that the farmers will kindly give me their excess produce.

Cherry tomatoes and hot red chilies.

Last year I was allowed to pick tomatoes from fields that had been abandoned. It is commercial practice to only pick tomatoes while they are green. When the price drops, or the farmer thinks the plants are past their prime, the crop will be abandoned as uneconomical. When time permits the farmer will clear his land for a different crop in his rotation plan. Thus, each year I witness the waste of many vegetables as they rot in the field.

Sun ripened Roma tomatoes

The good thing is that as the crop was still green when the farmer abandoned it, these tomatoes had several weeks to ripen naturally in the sun, free of insecticides. . Read the rest of this entry »

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FOR CARMEN

Carmen was one of three Italian girls who came to WWOOF for me in August. Recently she wrote to ask:

Kookaburra by David Osburg.

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AN ABUNDANT SUMMER BEGINS.

Is it possible that our Queensland climate could be reverting to the type of summer weather this state hasn’t experienced for two decades? It is shaping up that way with excellent rain on the Granite Belt and a devastating storm hitting Brisbane a few days after my last Red November garden tour. Now my garden is growing like a jungle and the neigbour’s cattle are happily grazing our grass land. The Severn River is flowing and our dams are full.

I set out to take a walk with my camera on Saturday afternoon and met our flock of geese marching home to be penned for the night safe from foxes and other predators. They are always rewarded with a handful of cracked corn to encourage their return, although as a grazing bird their diet consists mainly of grasses and herbage.

Geese coming home.

I was heading down to photograph one of the dams when I began to see the occasional speckle of a white field mushrooms amongst the grass, so promptly returned for a basket and knife. Read the rest of this entry »

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A GREEN DROUGHT

The Severn River which forms one boundary of our farm flows south-west to join the largest river system in Australia, known as the Murray-Darling Rivers system. Like the Mississippi River in the USA it drains inland waters south to the sea. Early Australian explorers thought there must be an inland sea in the middle of Australia, as all the rivers they discovered on the far side of the Great Dividing Range drained westward. By following these rivers they found that they later joined with the Darling River to flow south and into the sea in what became the State of South Australia. Thus water from southern Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria flows south over several months before reaching its destination in South Australia. It is a slow flowing river and subject to periods of drought when it becomes nothing more than a series of water holes. A hundred years ago paddle steamers worked the river, carrying out wool bales and other produce from the interior. During times of drought they remained stranded waiting for “The river to come down.” During the past decade drought has once more dried this mighty river to a series of water holes.

Here on the Granite Belt at the northern end of this river system, we rely on summer storms to start the water flowing. Most years we get sufficient rain to bring our river down in a flood and on average, once in a decade we will get a mighty flood as happened in January 2008.

Flooded Severn River January 2008

Since this January flood we have received little rainfall and experienced a dry winter.  During these spring months, storms have only brought small falls. This has created a green drought. The countryside appears green, but there is little grass growth. The abundance of water in our frontage to the Severn River has provided me with the ability to irrigate my garden and Remembrance Field of Flanders poppies during this drought. Read the rest of this entry »

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IMPRESSIONIST VIEWS

Sue Webber was the first journalist who, when writing about my garden in 1996 for the Australian Country Style magazine, said that it was like a living Monet painting with the pastel blue and mauve dotted by splashes of crimson from the poppies. At no time is the similarity to impressionist painting truer than on a misty morning. In the view below you see the winding brick path leading to the front door of Das Helwig Haus B&B. Perfume from the white star jasmine sprawling over an old stump pervades the damp air. Dark blue cornflowers mingle with lighter blue ‘Love in the Mist’ and pink snapdragons demand to be noticed, while further away red poppies dot the greenery and spears from red hot pokers thrust upward against the rounded foliage of shrubs.

Star jasmine beside brick path.

During this season of the year I sometimes wake to find my view enclosed by a misty ground fog. It is magical to wander in my garden at that time, because I can imagine myself anywhere in the northern Hemisphere or New Zealand due to the plants that I have established here at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt. Over the years so many of my guests have told me, “This garden  reminds me of my mother’s garden in England or New Zealand or Holland.” What they are saying, it that particular plants growing together give them this feeling of nostalgia. It is the plants like foxgloves and forget-me-nots that they don’t see in most Queensland gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

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DRAMATIC SEASONAL CHANGE

One of the joys of living at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt is that due to the cool mountain climate this district experiences the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn. Much of Queensland only knows the hot, humid wet season of summer and the warm dry season of winter.

In 1990 when I visited Europe in the early spring as the snow was melting I witnessed the dramatic change as tulips and pansies flowered in April just as the fruiting cherry and apple trees burst into blossom. in May they were followed by the lilac, phingst rosen and climbing red roses.

When we moved to live here at Glen Aplin in 1992 I realised I could grow these same flowers. I was agreeably surprised at how rapidly, just like I had seen in Europe, spring arrived and dramatically changed the appearance of my garden.

These photos taken in August, when the decision was made to remove large eucalyptus trees, and photos taken of the same scenes now reveal the changes.

Last month of winter at Das Helwig Haus B&B 2008

The Remembrance Field had been cultivated at the end of June. The Flanders poppies had germinated but were merely a green tinge across the soil due to the dry and frosty conditions throughout July and August.

We had made the decision to bring in heavy equipment – a large excavator on tracks, with a bucket in which a man could be raised to tie chains to the branches of these eucalyptus trees. With a chainsaw the branches and tree trunks were cut to then be swung out and dropped onto the field.

The excavator claws then gripped these heavy lengths of timber and the machine clanked away to drop them in heaps off the field, where once more a chain saw could be used to cut wood into rounds, later to be split for firewood.

Now for the “WOW” factor. Read the rest of this entry »

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