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/

Technorati Tags: Australia, Australian, book, Christmas, Das Helwig Haus B&B, red flanders poppy, remembrance field of flanders poppies, Wildflowers wilderness and wine

PREPARING THE REMEMBRANCE FIELD

The spring months in Australia are September, October and November but it is only here on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland that this otherwise sub-tropical and tropical State actually experiences a real spring. This is due to our altitude in the border highlands near the New South Wales border. Within Queensland our district is famous for the cold winters, but this year the weather was pleasantly mild. It was the warmest winter since 1993.

Also, at the end of August southern Queensland experienced a minor heatwave, giving the region the hottest August days since 1946. Wow! What a way to enter spring. Naturally such a mild winter and then the burst of heat in August has pushed my garden and the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies into rapid growth.

Rows of Flanders poppy plants

The Remembrance Field was cultivated during the first week of July which germinated the poppy plants. In August I went through the field with a hoe, chipping out rows of poppies to thin them. In the photo above you will see one cornflower plant. In August I transplanted several of these seedlings into to field. They will later provide a scattering of blue flowers amongst the red Flanders poppies. The Latin name of the cornflower is Centaurea cyanus and it was the mythical creature the Centaur who supposedly gave the power of healing to mankind. To Australians the Centaur is also remembered as the name of the hospital ship bringing our wounded soldiers home, which was sunk off Brisbane during the second World War by a Japanese submarine. This year a concerted effort is being made to locate the wreck of the Centaur. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Australia, Australian, Centaur, Das Helwig Haus B&B, France, Glen Aplin, Japanese, poppies, Queensland, remembrance field of flanders poppies, Rosemary hedge, the granite belt, Wildflowers wilderness and wine

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 »

Technorati Tags: Australia, Darling River, field mushrooms, flanders poppy, Great Dividing Range, lettuce, manure, Mississippi River, poppies, potatoes, Queensland, remembrance field, remembrance field of flanders poppies, Rosemary hedge, severn river, sweet-corn, the granite belt, tomatoes, vegetable

FUN OVER FIFTIES

On Sunday 2 November it was my pleasure to escort through my garden the first of three tours this season brought to me by Toni Brennan of Fun Over Fifties Tours. Toni has been bringing tour groups to my garden and to enjoy all the other attractions of Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt in November, for several years.

http://www.funoverfifty.com.au

As with every tour group I positioned these thirty visitors on the veranda of the apartments at Das Helwig Haus B&B where they could overlook the garden while I answered their questions.

Veranda of Das Helwig Haus apartments.

Toni’s tours are punctual and never hurried which means the visitors are happily laughing and have the time to question me in detail as we proceed down through the vegetable and herb gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: das helwig haus, Europe, fig trees, Glen Aplin, granite belt, jam, lemon verbena, organic garden, red flanders poppy, remembrance field of flanders poppies

In years gone by the Flanders poppy spread with mankind right around the Mediterranean Sea and across Europe from Russia to Great Britain. Man, with bags of wheat seed, probably carried it across the English Channel, as the poppy was a weed of wheat fields. Another alternative is that the seed was carried in soil attached to a garden implement.

There is much mythology associated with these poppies because they have grown for centuries around the Mediterranean. They appear on ancient Greek friezes and seed has been found in the tombs of the Pharaohs. One story is that they originated in China. It was then a white flower from which a potent drug was distilled, called the Flower of Forgetfulness. After a battle when much blood was shed upon a field, the poppies grew red the next year, with a black cross in the middle. These poppies are still a wild flower and each year I see variations of colour in the overall expanse of red from shades of orange to almost purple.
Throughout my childhood as I discovered the joys of embroidery I particularly liked the designs that featured what were commonly called the Field flowers. These were the red Flanders poppy, blue cornflower, golden wheat heads and sometimes the white Marguerite daisy. When holidaying in Europe with my husband in 1990 I realised a life long ambition, to see these flowers blooming amongst the wheat crops.
Two years later when we moved to live on the Granite Belt I realised that I could grow the red Flanders poppy to begin flowering in October and continue to the end of November. The poppy flower has a small cup-like seed head that perhaps contains a thousand seeds. These seeds are as small as ground black pepper and just as hard. As the seed ripens they fall as from a pepper pot on to the ground and remain there in the soil until conditions are ready for germination.
The field poppies, or Flanders poppies as they are now known, were weeds of the wheat fields of France and Belgium. Due to the devastation of World War One no wheat was planted in the fields over which the armies of Europe fought. The soil of these fields was disturbed by the shelling, trench digging and grave digging. We have all heard of the heavy rains that turned this arena into a quagmire during the winter months, but in the spring the poppies appeared with a blaze or red wherever the soil had been disturbed. The soldiers from Commonwealth countries had never seen the like and they named them the Flanders Poppy.
Each year we cultivate our Remembrance Field towards the end of June. This throws the fine seed on to the surface of the soil. Firstly we turn the soil over with a disc plough. Then harrows are dragged over the field to level the soil.

It is then necessary that the seed be kept moist for the next two weeks. It is possible that we will have a down pour of winter rain to soak the soil, but if rain doesn’t fall we apply water via overhead irrigation sprinklers.
This winter of 2008 has been cold and dry. The photo below shows the frost on the field one July morning. The poppies have germinated but are only small plants at the time this photo was taken.

The frosts have continued into August but I have great faith that once the warm weather arrives in September the poppies in the Remembrance Field will grow rapidly.

Technorati Tags: blue cornflower, field poppies, flanders poppy, golden wheat heads, poppies, poppy flower, preparing the remembrance field, red flanders poppy, remembrance field, remembrance field of flanders poppies, white marguerite daisy

Hello, I’m Fay Helwig of Das Helwig Haus B&B near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt.  I grew up on a cattle property and later lived on different farms in varied climates where I always established a garden.
 
I now live in a cool mountain district famous for being the coldest region of Queensland. Due to the cool climate the area is recognised for its high altitude wines and apple orchards. A district attraction is the Girraween National Park famous for granite mountains and Australian wildflowers.
 
I have combined all these features Wildflowers, Wilderness and Wine as my title for a book about my lifestyle.
 
My aim with this blog is to share with you the fun of tourism festivals, the joy of growing a huge and productive garden and the self-sufficiency skills I can teach you.  My blog will include photographs, recipes and anecdotes concerning the training of young WWOOFERs – willing workers on organic farms.
 
 Das Helwig Haus B&B was named the best Bed and Breakfast in Queensland by the journalists of the Sunday Mail. The Remembrance Field of Flanders Poppies was featured on Burke’s Backyard and the German Christmas feasts are shown on SBS Food Lovers Guide to Australia.

Technorati Tags: australian wildflowers, best bed and breakfast in queensland, burke's backyard, cattle property, coldest region of queensland, cool mountain district, das helwig haus, fay helwig, german christmas feast, girraween national Park, granite belt, granite mountains, productive garden, remembrance field of flanders poppies, sbs food lovers guide, self-sufficiency skills, stanthorpe, WWOOF, yourism festivals