Virtually everything on our block is a native plant of some variety but I do have some ornamentals in pots in the patio and out the front of my house. The frangipani and two happy plants out the front are kicking along quite nicely with their weekly dousing with recycled water but I have had mixed success with the patio pot plants. I did have three gardenias and two evening jasmine plants because I thought they looked pretty and the nursery guru assured me they were easy care and almost impossible to kill.

Well obviously they hadn’t met me yet….either that or their definition of easy care is substantially different to my own. You see, my definition of easy care is what you give to a mature native plant - it gets watered whenever it rains, gets fertilised when bugs die in the soil and the only pruning it gets is when branches get broken off by over zealous birds or the occasional visiting stray cat. I really dig natives for this reason - they are the original easy care plant and perfect for the climate around here.

Not so with evening jasmine…..it wilts and dies if it doesn’t get at least a weekly drink and I have lost one of the plants due to complete neglect of its needs for water and plant food. I also lost one gardenia for the same reason - it turns out it was of a less hardy variety than the two that survived. After some panicked pruning, frantic fertilising and zealous watering (albeit with recycled water), three of the original five plants have sprung back to life from the very brink of death. *hehe*

So if you’re like me and have a substantial black thumb instead of a green thumb, you might be interested in some plants on offer at your local Bunnings. I headed down there to pick up a couple of replacement plants and they have this new Mighty Tuff plant range designed specifically for plant killers such as myself. I got two Euryops virginatus gold plants, which are a small shrubby plant which when flowering have little tiny yellow flowers all over.

If it’s still alive in six months, I’ll take another photo. I certainly hope it lives up to its reputation.

December 5th, 2007 | Tags: landscaping, plants | Category: Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL