An Open Day is a great way to get feedback from gardeners on what you’re growing and how you’re doing.
Category Archives: Collections
Autumn Open Day at Bellis
Every time I open my garden there is something to celebrate about organic gardening and seed saving.
Where Do I Get Seed For That Plant?
Most of the seed sold in Australia is imported, harvested from plants farmed overseas.
Continue Reading →
Acclimatisation, The Continuing Story
“With the right breeding and care, food plants have – so far – fed and sustained human civilisation”
Predator Attracting Plants
Organic gardening isn’t conventional gardening, so why not enjoy some unconventional pest control?
In Flower Today
Brisbane‘s subtropical winter comes to a happy, floriferous end in mid-August. Today there’s around a hundred different plants flowering, two weeks before Australia’s official first day of spring.
New Botanical Stamps Uploaded
I’ve just posted a few more stamps and first day covers into my botanical stamps gallery.
I’m pleased to now include some on food security as well as other classic themes, including conservation, garden plants, fossils and Australiana…
Jerry Coleby-Williams
1st November 2012
First Flowering: Pandanus cookii
This summer my fifteen year old specimen of Pandanus cookii flowered. It was collected from Cape York by Yuruga Nursery in the Atherton Tableland, where I bought it.
Like all Pandanus, they are intolerant of frost and grow best in sub-coastal gardens in full sunshine in an open position with excellent drainage. I watered my plant six times to get it established when I planted it in September 2004. When it starts growing in summer it gets a small amount of poultry manure. Continue Reading →
Seeking Sansevierias
Having to give away my collection of croton cultivars during Brisbane’s ongoing drought made sense at the time. But I do enjoy collecting plants, so I’ve decided to collect drought-resistant Sansevieria instead.
Pictured is Sansevieria suffruticosa subsp. longituba from Kenya, which grows 15 – 20cm high.
This plant produces flowers on spikes up to 30cm tall in either autumn or spring, sometimes both in good conditions.
A bowl of this succulent scents the house almost as well as Gardenia.
I’m aware that Sansevieria trifasciata has gained a reputation for being a bushland weed in warm parts of coastal eastern Australia, but this isn’t mostly the fault of gardeners. The main culprits are not gardeners, they’re often contractors responsible for fly tipping. As a weed, these shallow-rooted plants are easily lifted, and after being solarised or drowned make decent compost. Continue Reading →
Darwinia polychroma
Darwinia polychroma
I’ve finally found the original slide I took when I discovered this new species of Darwinia (Myrtaceae) whilst in Western Australia on the Thornton-Smith Scholarship in 1982.
Each year the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew funds a botanical expedition for one of its students on completion of the Kew course. I spent six months travelling, collecting and photographing the wildflowers in the south west of WA, following spring from Exmouth to Esperance.
During that time I exported over 450 species of wildflower to Kew, many of which had never before been grown in Europe. For each specimen collected for export I kept photographic and botanical collection records and also provided the Kew and Western Australian herbaria with voucher (pressed, dried) specimens. Continue Reading →
