I've been giving gifts of trees, flowers and shrubs for decades. Plants are the perfect present - the gift that gives joy for years, decades or even centuries, a fine addition to the local and global environment, presenting the giftee with flowers, possibly fruit, green leaves and great enjoyment...
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Except, in the past 12 months, if has been tactfully pointed out to me by three close friends that they actually don't want a couple of dwarf apple trees to begin their apple tree hedge front fence; nor did another want a dwarf self-pollinating cherry tree, even though they love cherries, nor does a third friend want a new herb garden, even though she and her husband are keen gardeners and cooks and adore herbs.
Their excuse? Next door's building has meant the destruction of their side fence and construction materials over their garden, and they want to wait until the mess is cleaned up to reconstruct their garden. The second would-be recipient fears that the birds that will share the cherries may leave a mess on her paving. The third is doing major reconstruction of the dilapidated house they purchased in the early pandemic and anything they plant will probably be driven over by delivery vans and ditch diggers.
This is slightly worrying. I actually asked all three what they'd like in the way of garden gifts. Mostly I don't ask. I simply present the plant as a nice surprise. It has only just occurred to me that while the plants have inevitably been a surprise - I tend to give unusual plants that the recipient would be unlikely to have - they may not have been "nice".
The friend who now has a caper bush growing in a large hanging basket in her glass house possibly didn't want to spend precious time in the new year holidays transplanting it and hanging it, even if she is enjoying harvesting her own capers now. The three friends who received native finger lime trees may not actually want to grow the prickly things, even if they find the fruit delicious. Perhaps there wasn't room near a sunny window for the coffee bushes and allspice trees to be grown indoors, or room in the garden for the Chinese pistachio for its golden autumn leaves. As for the water garden filled with sagittaria or "duck potatoes" that can be grown and used like water chestnuts? Maybe it just bred mosquitos that spoiled every luncheon they had outside.
A few gifts have definitely worked. The kids I gave the "potato bag" to - you keep mulching, and the spuds in the bag keep producing tubers - loved tipping out their own potato harvest. The friends - and rosellas - who gained an apricot tree are still loving the fruit. The purple smoke bush is still a star of the garden.
I've been the recipient of "surprise" plant gifts, too. We are still pulling out the jasmine "gift" a friend planted when I was elsewhere, and only noticed when it began to bloom and its fragrance filled the garden. The whole blasted vine is now trying to fill the garden and we spend far too much of every year trying to eradicate it. Ditto the potato vine, the many rose bushes I've been given despite not having a sunny place to plant them. As for the Illawarra Flame tree - hadn't the giver noticed we already had one?
Other gifts have been a joy. Friends who know a heck of a lot more than I do about new cultivars of native plants have given me some stunners - I've never had a dud native plant gift. Much of my garden has been grown from cuttings or seedlings from friends, though admittedly in most cases I've asked if I might have a cutting or a few spare bulbs. The tree fern and Climbing Souvenir de a Malmaison rose outside my study are daily reminders of the friends who gave them to me - and who knew me and my garden and what it needed i.e. a rose that would grow out of wallaby reach, and a tree fern planted close enough to the house to give it the odd cup of used toothbrushing water in bad droughts to keep it alive, even if it didn't flourish till it rained.
I've just chosen another garden gift for a friend. This time I did my research, and asked the local nursery owner for advice. Camellias, she said decisively - as camellias delight in dappled shade, most gardens can fit in a new camellia or three, but who did I want to buy it for? Again, she knew exactly what they'd like, a 'Little Gem' dwarf magnolia that would give months of white flowers and need little care.
I have not quite learned my lesson - next time I come across a gem like a purple-fleshed dwarf apple I may very well think of a friend who really needs another apple tree. But I will try to resist, at least until I find out if they have room, time, actually want to eat purple-fleshed apples, and don't intend to do major renovations in the next 12 months.
It might just turn out to be the perfect gift.
This week I am:
- Burrowing through my boxes of seeds to find the various onion varieties for planting.
- Bunging in the last of the broad bean seeds and the first of the peas: snow peas and a lovely variety of podded pea that has few leaves but lots of twining tendrils, so most of the plant's efforts go into climbing a trellis and hopefully, pea production.
- Trying to convince myself that the three dead-looking sticks in pots that just arrived in the mail will turn into giant pink- and white-headed hydrangeas one day, hopefully within 12 months, beginning to produce leaves as soon as the weather warms.
- Watching new autumn leaf colours appear overnight, and more camellias open their buds and bloom.
- Supervising the demise of yet more jasmine and potato vine.
- Waiting for the first mandarin of the season to lose its last hint of green, soften in the first frost, and then share it with my husband, and, hopefully, not with the possums, too.
Jackie French
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
