Some nice Hibiscus

I have heard about a place in Brazil,where they have cultivated,more then 2500 different kind of Hibiscus.
In my Nursery,i just had this few ones,you can see at this Pictures

Winter in Bavaria

Strange and unusual Flowers

Outside,the first snow is falling. - I have nothing to do,so i surfed around a little bit,to get a touch of warmth.
On my Way,i passed a link,where i saw the following amazing Pictures. I couldnt avoid,to share them with you.
If you want to know more about,you can copy the following Link:
http://www.funonthenet.in/articles/unusual-plants.html

Organic Treatment for a Feng Shui cure

One of the few things that I don't like about my new house is the dining nook.  It's placement in the kitchen fits in well with our entertaining style, everyone gathers around and watches Chad cook, but the nook itself is too small and feels like a pass through to the back yard. Its chandelier is uninspired and the window treatments are fine but a bit "sweet." On the feng shui floor plan it's located in the "Creativity" area, which makes these problems nearly disastrous for a photographer/ceramicist/artist.  I'm looking for the perfect chandelier but I haven't found it yet, and I can't put up new curtains until Casey matures a bit and won't climb them. In the mean time I thought it would be clever to make a rosemary topiary to enhance this area.

Putting a cooking herb in a dining nook seems like a natural enhancement. I love fresh rosemary but it doesn't always overwinter well in this climate so bringing it indoors is a good idea and making it into a topiary is creative.  It's still a young topiary so it's a bit sparse on top, but it will have a ball on top to match the ball on the bottom. Round shapes, the color white, and the number three are all good elements for this area. So, I'm training the topiary into round balls (I'll probably eventually add a third ball to the top of it), I put it in a round white pot and placed it on a three tiered round white marble table. I topped the soil with decorative pebbles, three relatively large pebbles surrounded by smaller ones.

Everything was great until the autumn sun lowered in the sky until it stopped coming through the window all together.  At that point, the topiary developed powdery mildew.  The general treatment for powdery mildew is to give the plant good air flow and sunlight, so I took it outside on mild days. But now the weather is colder so I had to come up with a more aggressive treatment. 

I looked at some of my older books on houseplants and they said the treatment for powdery mildew is to cut out and burn the affected areas of the plant and then spray harsh chemicals. Whoa! That sounds like overkill to me! First of all, I'm trying to create a topiary so I'm not very willing to cut out large sections of the plant. Second of all, powdery mildew isn't THAT serious of a problem.

So, I checked out some organic gardening websites and they said that the bad news is there is no cure for powdery mildew, but the good news is that it's easily kept under control and it's not a very serious problem. OK, that's more I like it. They suggested mixing 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda into a quart of water and spraying it onto the plant. If I had known the treatment was going to work so quickly I would have taken a "before" shot! "Before" it was covered with a white powder, the very next day it looks perfectly healthy! Woo hoo!

Garden Tour - Keith

Garden Tour - Keith


Bonny Hills, NSW. Australia.

This has been a long  time coming this Garden Tour. So many things have been happening that I have had very little time or motivation for writing blogs - even to comment has been a chore at times, such has been the distractions of things personal at the moment. Anyway here are seven photographs as a tour of my garden area together with and attached album of further photos for you to browse through and see what else there is to find here.
CLICK HERE FOR ATTACHED ALBUM



I live in NSW on the coast about 370km or 300 mile north of Sydney. Here the daytime temperature ranges between 12c and 45c from winter to summer but those extremes  are never fro prolonged periods. Although not full;y sub tropical, the plants from the tropical north flourish here and this garden is crammed with a good selection. There are numerous palms, tree ferns, staghorns, birdsnest ferns, bamboo, birds of Paradise, bromiliads, etc, etc.... These photos and ATTACHED ALBUM will give you a good idea of the variety.

These are Photographs of the garden area in general - mainly snapshots to give a general idea of the feel and outlay of the garden. I did this blog this way rather than studies on individual features and plants which I will create in another blog which I hope to complete and present fairly soon. This Garden attracts many colourful birds and creatures of all sorts and is a cool oasis well shaded from the heat and intense Australian sun. Winter does tend to be a lot cooler because of the amount of shade so on colder days I seek out the sunny spots and follow them around  during the day as the sun moves across the sky. So please enjoy these photos and I will let them do the talking for me. Please not here that my Housemate Vera does most of the tending to this garden whereas  I had  more input in creating the newer landscape design and layout  and initial hard labour in establishing them since Vera purchased the house about 10 years ago. The gardens were quite well established already  with the previous owner having collected many of the palms and tropical plants from a tour he and his wife did of the northern regions of the continent. My main interest is in the vegetable garden where I am much more at home. See my earlier Blogs for these.

Garden Tour - Keith. - Bonny Hills, NSW. Australia

the main tree in center is a frangipani and golden palm to the right of that - the other palm I am not sure what it is

this is in addition to my garden tour Blog - just some photos of corners of the gardem