Gardens don't understand the term "holiday season".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
It's the busiest, hottest time of year yet gardens insist on growing, fruiting, producing weeds and needing watering and tending to stay green and flowering, just when you want them to look their best.
![Easy care gardening basically means plonking the right plant in the right place. Photo: Peter Braig Easy care gardening basically means plonking the right plant in the right place. Photo: Peter Braig](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/965a49f9-e2ce-4e7c-8424-85de8fbe81fe/r0_0_2000_1333_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Be firm. Do not allow your garden to dictate your life these holidays.
Lawns: Our solution is to let the grass turn brown until it rains. The wombats are not impressed, but the lawn has never failed to recover. Others install artificial grass, which needs no water but is hot to sit on. Alternatively offer any available small kids pocket money, a book or their choice of luxury fruit in return for watering every afternoon.
Watering can just be wet and messy fun. Try skipping with the long arch of water from the hose: the kids cool down and your lawn gets watered all in one go.
As for mowing: put the mower on the highest setting to just chop the heads off the weeds. Low mowing encourages grass growth.
Weeds: Cover them, then forget about them. Mulch 60 cm deep with sugar cane mulch or pea straw, loose enough so that showers can penetrate.
Lots of flowers to impress the rellies: Garden centres have this sorted for you every holiday season– tempting 'self watering' baskets brimming with easy-care flowers, as well as pots of bloomers, ready to be slipped into bare areas, from a metre of spreading petunias to advanced shrubs like hibiscus or even splendiferous standard weeping roses. An hour's browsing, an hour's planting or hanging basket installing and your garden will be stunning. Mulch and water as above.
Invest in plant sculpture: Many plants have evolved to grow in dry, hard, hot, sunny soil – just like the mixture in the tall pot on your patio or along a bare wall.
Buy matching pots; fill with sculptural beauties like agaves, cordylines, grass trees, some of the larger aloes, phormiums, dracaenia and some of the smaller palms. All of them will grow vigorously if given food and water, but they won't go and wither on you if you neglect them over the holidays.
Potted tree ferns can look fabulous in quite deep shade. They are remarkably hardy once they are established, but look their best protected from both sun and wind, so a wall blocking the prevailing wind and protection from the summer sun are mandatory.
Fruiting trees: Hope the possums, flying foxes and birds pick the fruit for you, or put up a note saying 'pick your own' or, once again, ask the kids. As a last resort place a cloth under tree, shake well till all the fruit is down (and bruised) then bung the fruit whole into the freezer to make stewed fruit or jam or chutney in midwinter, or whenever you have time to draw breath and collect the jam pots.
Hanging ferns: For a cool green look in mid-summer there is nothing more frothy or fabulous than a staggered line of hanging baskets filled with ferns. Try them to help turn the veranda in to cool green light, or hang them under the front steps. Once again, choose self-watering pots to stop wilting. And, again, they do not like too much wind.
Easy care gardening basically means plonking the right plant in the right place. The bush grows happily with no human intervention- and not so happily the more human intervention it gets. And these holidays are a great time to start doing as little as possible in your garden.
This week I am:
- Eating mulberries just because they are dangling from the tree, but all the rain means they just taste of water.
- Hoping the dahlias decide to bloom for Christmas.
- Watching the finger limes ripen. I'll serve their golden globules on top of tiny potato rosti.
- Remembering just how wonderfully freshly mown grass smells: Bryan has just cut the grass we sometimes erroneously call 'the lawn' and the wombats call 'mine'.
- Hauling out more banana passionfruit and trying not to trip over the piles left from last week's hauling. They need to dry out before I can risk using them as mulch.
- Hauling the coffee bush out of the living room and into the fresh air and rain. It is happy.