Thursday 21 February 2008

Who knew begonias had it in them?

I have several layers in my garden. The one that gets the most attention is my main level. Yet it is the lower end of the garden that always explodes in a riot of colour. This year is had been particularly pretty because I introduced pink begonias to the mix. They now flank the sides of the stairs that lead down to this level. The mix of bougainvillaea and begonias is the colouful front and the terrace is given height by heliconias and musa bananas.
Ever curious. What ARE you doing down there? The pink begonias are also lightly scented in the morning but strangely not at night. This is the front of my garden. I am a big believer in using mundo grass to hold my beds. I find without a good border, I lose all my soil in the rainy season. I also like the effect that it provides. This bed is difficult to handle as it receives blasts of blistering sun or full shade depending on the time of year. Again my begonias have done really well here. My grass on the other hand, is just beginning to grow after not receiving sun for the better part of six months.

Hello babies! Yes this is my brand new crop of cocoa seedlings grown from my mother tree. I also managed to germinated a batch of roucou or annatto but could not get them past the seedling stage. My congo or scotch bonnet peppers are also just coming in and I want to try and combine these with the more highly flavoured piri piri ones and make a Chutney pepper sauce.

3 comments:

Colin and Carol said...

I like the idea of your Mundo grass, though I am not familiar with it. We have been trying to incorporatee grasses into our beds but I think they are unbalanced in our case. Yours do look effective and we might use a similar approach.

Wicked Gardener said...

OHHH! I always feel like I've happened on treasure when I find a fellow tropical gardener. Your garden is gorgeous and I am aiming for the same. In Florida, frost kills my tropicals before they can start looking like yours! The mundo grass is an excellant idea, I'll have to try it. What are the purple colored flowers in the background? Are they bougainvillaea? If they are, they are the prettiest I've seen.

Sunshinemom said...

We used to have beautiful gardens like yours tended by gardeners when I was a child. Now I stay in flat, and don't have one......Yours looks so beautiful. Obviously nurtured well. Thanks for bringing back memories...