November 9, 2012

I am not The Garden Whisperer


I kill plants.

It doesn't matter how hard I try to tend and water, and love a shrub or a bush or a flower, it usually dies.  Give me a plastic houseplant and I'll kill it as well.

I don't know what it is.  I just don't have a green thumb.  Unlike my mother, who has ten green thumbs, or two green thumbs and eight green fingers.....are you still with me?

She has an amazing garden.  She can grow anything from a cutting, and has an abundance of beautiful flowers and shrubs and everything always looks so lovely!

Everywhere she goes, she manages to sneak a cutting, wrap it in newspaper and pop it on the floor of the car, to be lovingly replanted in a pot somewhere.

And that's another thing.  She has all manner of garden statues, and gnomes sacrebleu and wagon type wheels and sticks holding crazy looking plants upright, but it all looks so....together!

Don't even get me started on the ceramic frogs that I find, with their fingernails painted in bright colours!  Yes, she has a great sense of humour!

I love her garden.  I love when we both just walk around and she explains what each flower is, or where she collected that particular shrub or who she stole the cutting from.....

So what about my garden?  Well, at the moment, it doesn't even exist.  Which doesn't mean I don't have grand plans!  We have a section at the front of the house that we plan to use for some nice palm trees perhaps and some cute ground shrubs.

I think this garden gnome would fit right in....


Image

I also plan to organise my terracotta pots to feature some beautiful (hardy) flowers in all colours that are kill free.  I also want to "build" a fairy garden for my girls...somewhere they can sit and daydream and have pots of beautiful flowers surrounding them. With little paved steps leading into an archway of the most fragrant Jasmine (my absolute favourite).......

Am I thinking too big, perhaps?  Can it be done?  Do I have to call on Beth to give me some tips, because as far as I'm concerned, she rocks the garden?

I'll start slow, with this...I think it's a Frangapani....and so far I haven't killed it. 



Ha, yeah, I'm surprised too.

How pretty!

Do YOU rock the garden?

9 comments:

Mum on the Run said...

No, my touch seems to be fatal too.
I kill herbs, for goodness' sake.
We have a lot of yukkas.
The yukkas show no fear.
:-) xx

Dreaming said...

I was told you couldn't become a true 'gardener' until you had killed 10,000 plants. I bet you still have a ways to go!

Emma T said...

I've inherited my mum's lack of interest about gardening, and therefore I kill everything (that included an African Violet which was meant to be indestructible, and I currently have an almost dead hyacinth - I think, in my kitchen). We have a paddock - it's not yet (after 10 years) been turned into a garden, although I can manage geraniums around the side of the house. Plants just take too much time - I'd like someone to just come and make ours a garden which needs nothing more than the occasional prune!

fromsophiesview said...

That F Plant would die here for sure...indoors or forget it. Your Mom sounds like a sneaky little doll...love the sneaking cuttings....hey who hasn't done that. I sitting beside an African planet that was snitched 10 years ago...it's healthy and hanging in there. Your dreams for your children's fairy garden sounds perfect....don't give up!
Ron

Anonymous said...

I love the garden and I think thats the key. I'm not brilliant at it but I enjoy working and pottering in a garden. Once you immerse yourself in one you learn to learn and I believe its one of the most therapeutic past times you can partake in. G.x Good luck with yours.

River said...

That plant is definitely a Frangipani.
I don't often kill plants, they survive, but that's all they do. No thriving, just surviving and maybe a little growth now and then. I think it's because I don't care enough anymore. I used to grow fruit trees and vegetables, herbs and flowers, and they all did very well. Now all I have is four pots on the front porch steps. And the lovely, lovely gardens of other people surrounding the blocks of flats that I'm living in.

Erin said...

haha i have frangipanis too over the last 8 years i have kept them alive but i somehow have managed to stunt their growth lol

Jacana said...

I have three frangapani's in my garden and not one of them even has a leaf - I am like you brown thumbs and fingers.

jeanie said...

We have two frangipannis in our yard - one has been here for over 20 years, the other we planted last year.

It is AMAZING what they can survive.

But be warned - for many months of the year, they LOOK dead.