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Caroline Gardner's pictures

End of Year Lunch 2023

Mt Annan Herbarium Visit - 16 November 2023

For me it felt like a really fun group going on an educational jaunt with lunch thrown in. It was my first such trip - we all talked non-stop on the journey to Mt Annan - and after a rather bizarre circuitous effort on the part of Susan to find the entry on this hot morning - our guide Virginia emerged from this State of the Art Plant Lab set on never-ending land (which was inexpensive to buy in the earliest instance, I believe) It hosts some of the rarest seeds in the world and the propagation techniques have to be seen to be believed. It was like being on a Top-Secret James Bond set where some of the country's top brains work behind thick glass panes.
After covering considerable distances in this vast building, lunch in a rather smaller adjacent restaurant was certainly welcome and really both colourful and delicious. Full marks from us all, I believe. Not forgetting our indefatigable organisers - a very interesting day, thank you!
Sandie Cleaver

Bronwyn's Beautiful Bounty

Yvonne's Garden

Liz McCowage 🐜🐛🐞

I so miss the garden club meetings but I’m also happy that spring has arrived at last. We’ve been busy removing pine trees as I hadn’t realised these trees suck all the goodness from the soil and my plants were struggling to compete. Ours is a young garden and I’m hoping this year, with added fertiliser and mulch, that the plants will have a fighting chance. (Watch this space for updates next year; that’s a little way off but I think plants just don’t grow fast enough for me). Am sending before and after photos. I can’t wait to catch up with you all and the great team and friends of the garden club.

Pauline and Warwick Bartle 🦉🐜🐞

. I’ve mainly been doing the following in no particular order, but just as my mind randomly thinks about it all:

a) Constantly keeping on top of weeds, which though boring, I find quite meditative.
b) Planted eight roses, ordered from Wagner Roses. All doing well.
c) All sorts of perennial plants ordered online that usually come in a dormant state are now all planted and mulched and marked with labels and sticks so no one inadvertently treads on them!
d) The Veggie Patch has yielded broccoli, assorted lettuces, carrots, kale and bok choy. Peas are on the verge of picking with broad beans, potatoes and chard coming along nicely. I have just planted out some beetroot too.
e) I've planted annuals and perennials from seed with mixed success, including honesty, orlaya grandiflora, foxgloves, cornflower, bellflower, valerian, sweet peas that are all in various stages of development.

Apart from my love of gardening, a real incentive and motive for getting the garden going is that my old garden club (KHGC) have booked a visit for November and we’re hoping COVID will be behind us and not cause a cancellation

Winter Lockdown Pics

Pauline Bartle and Jenny Meaney sent in pictures from their gardens in response to our request. Here's what we received:

Collector's Plant Fair - 2021

Thanks to Sandie Cleaver.

"Following our April Meeting I decided I would take off for this Fair on a beautiful Saturday morning – such an exciting drive along Hawkesbury Road and descending the winding road to townships below and on to the Hawkesbury Race Club Clarendon opposite the aerodrome. I didn’t have any trouble parking and not because I arrived particularly early but there seemed adequate space outside the main enclose on the roadside, and shelter for my car also.

I simply got lost in time engrossing myself on the sheer volume of plants and the calm enthusiasm of the stand holders many having come substantial distances leaving home at an unholy hour and there was quite a bit of wind around to contend with as most stands were partially shaded by their tents. I seemed attracted to – well almost everything except the coffee stands and I loathe queues but mostly the sheer variety of Salvia – the geraniums best displayed by Geranium Cottage (Dural) and bromeliads – also the startling colours and variety of orchids and nobody could deny the popularity of succulents which were substantially represented."
Sandie

Click on an image to see it full-size.

Janice's Garden

Pink Flannel Flowers

Actinotus forsythii These beautiful, small flowers are flowering in the Blue Mountains now because of last year’s bushfires and the good spring rain that followed. They like to grow in shallow, skeletal soils on ridges. Interestingly it is the smoke of the bushfire rather than the heat that helps the flowers germinate. The flowers last only a few months and it may be many years before conditions are favourable for them to flower again.
Thank you, Annabel Fraser. Also, Merilyn Shields and Carol Conway.

Pauline's Covid Year

See the March 2021 Newsletter for Pauline's story. Here are the pics

February Meeting - A new beginning

With all the planning, rules and structure required to get the meeting going, we forgot to record the event in pictures. Thankfully Sandie Cleaver took a couple of pics. Did anyone else? send them to us and we'll put them up here.