After a really torrid summer…
• Hottest February day – 44.7 °C (112.5 °F) on 2 February 2014,
• Record number of days exceeding 40 °C (104 °F) during the summer months (December, January and February),
• Record number of days exceeding 42 °C (108 °F) during a calendar year - 9 so far,
• Record number of consecutive days exceeding 42 °C (108 °F) – 5,
we’re finally into autumn, and have hopefully turned the corner into cooler weather.
We got 80mm of rain on February 14, which really revived the garden.
Today was another cool autumn day with light showers; and I walked around the garden feeling pretty chuffed at how good it was looking after such a summer. I wanted to share the pictures because I think it shows what really can be done through appropriate plant selection. Given Adelaide’s climate – which is dry Mediterranean, with annual rainfall of around 530mm, mostly falling from May through to September (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Adelaide), the plant selection leans heavily towards the most drought-tolerant of Mediterranean species.
Water is managed carefully. Not a drop that lands on this 1300sqm plot is wasted. All the water from the roof is either collected in rainwater in tanks or directed to the garden. We do supplementary water from a bore that yields reasonably sweet water about 800ppm.
The green lawns that you can see are drought tolerant species, Kikuyu in the back and buffalo at the front. They were only watered once a week right through summer. But they were watered deeply leaving the sprinklers on for an hour on each watering.
You can see the effects of the heat in the scorched leaf tips on the wisteria, the agapanthus and even the strelitzia – but overall it’s looking remarkably good.. and the autumn bulbs are coming up. Amaryllis belladonna leading the way, Rhodophiala bifida, Sternbergia lutea, Narcissus serotinus, Colchicum byzantium. The pot on the table in the backyard has spikes of the first autumn crocus showing.
I’m posting pictures starting at my backdoor (which looks due north) and then moving anticlockwise around the garden and ending up on the eastern side garden.
There's a shot of the driveway.. we chose to use gravel rather than paving the lot so that when we wash the cars (very rarely) the water flows to ground rather than being wasted.
Anita