These are the flowers we had in the garden in early winter 2012, mainly on 16 June 2012. They're not all overly pretty, but the purpose of the photos is to
record what was in the garden at the time.
This page shows most, but not all, of the flower photos I took: some were repetitive.
They're all there on the photo pages around 16 June.
A disappointing discovery were these plants, which we planted in Spring 2010 as part of a hedge:
They're a Grevillea
hookeriana and an Acacia iteaphylla,
and they've both clearly been blown over. The acacia might survive, but the grevillea was
snapped off at ground level. That's not the first time I've seen them suffer from wind, but
it's not a very good result for a tree sold as a hedge plant. We have a second of both
plants in the hedge, so I suppose it's time to go out and reinforce with star droppers.
Somehow winter is less the time of no flowers as the time where summer, autumn and spring
flowers overlap. Many summer plants are still with us, including the
white Abutilon that we bought
four months ago, which is flowering
for the first time:
I think they all suffered from lack of fertilizer. Next year I'll be much more generous.
More traditional winter plants include the Acacia iteaphylla (the other one, which is
smaller but already flowering), Azaleas,
the long-flowering Cyclamen, some of
which have flowered all summer long, and the
first Hellebores:
Then there are a few plants that I can't categorize. The current issue of Gardening Australia Magazine claims that Alyogyne
huegelii is not suited to our climate, but our specimen disagrees strongly. When is it
supposed to flower? According to
the Wikipedia page it's from
“June to January”, a particularly useful specification for a plant that is grown around the
world. I suppose that time frame implies Australia, but it doesn't match my experience. It
seems to flower continuously. My photos show I have taken photos of flowers every month
since 11 October 2010, less than 2 months after we got it. And the
Solanum vine that Yvonne gave me as a cutting is also
flowering profusely:
I had thought that it was Solanum laxum,
also known as Solanum sauveolens, but that suggests sweet smell, and it doesn't have that.
Yvonne took the cutting in late May, and it was flowering, so maybe this is the right time
for it, or maybe it just flowers most of the time.