It’s been a week of plant nursery visits, and fortunately there are a lot to choose from around here. We took my parents to Kingscliff, a beach town, on Saturday, because the markets were on and it’s just a nice place for coffee anyway. The markets were true to form and we picked up some shade-loving plants for the South-facing front of the house where we will make a formal entrance. At the moment it’s a bit wet underfoot as it sits at the base of a cutting and is permanently in shade, and there’s just some grass struggling among widely spaced pavers. So we bought 6 different Calatheas to begin the garden there.
After coffee we went to the Kingscliff nursery, which has a huge range at good prices, and I added a blue ginger and a Colocasia to increase the shade-loving collection, and a few more plants for the rest of the garden, which is all sunny.
Then on Tuesday we took Mum and Dad to the airport via the Rainforest Nursery at Burringbar, which has a bewildering array of plants. That ended up being a dry run since it was more seeing what is available, but now we have an idea for planning the native plant areas of the garden. But then in Tweed Heads the big nursery is closing down so we picked up $100 of sale plants, including a Heliconia, Gardenia, and Azaleas for planting on the morning – sun area in front of the house.
On Wednesday we were given two lovely punnets of heirloom celery by the guy who keeps cattle on our road, as a welcoming gift. That was ideal, as the celery I sowed four weeks ago has still not shown (although the celeriac has) and now I have a beautiful bed of advanced plants.
.
His beautiful long-horned cattle also produce excellent manure, of which I now have three bags, one of which is already on the new beds.
The manure was too late for the broad beans, which nevertheless are doing well in their new enclosure and making good progress a few days after making first appearance.
