On our way home from a recent trip to the city to visit R's lovely Mum, we decided to stop in at John Cole Nursery in Banjup. This nursery specialises in camellias and azaleas. We'd heard rumours that they have the biggest range available anywhere in this fair state of ours. We have some shady spots that we wanted some shade loving plants for. Camellias are ideal.
When we first entered the nursery, we were underwhelmed by the range of camellias on offer. There were maybe half a dozen varieties. Lots of azaleas but we weren't looking for those. Luckily, we spotted a sign that said, "More camellias and azaleas this way". We followed this sign and came across probably two or three acres (or maybe even more) of camellias and azaleas. It is fair to say that we were both completely overwhelmed by what we saw. The photos below show just a tiny part of the nursery.
Needless to say, our quick stop turned into about an hour and a half as we struggled to choose four plants from the dozens of beautiful varieties on offer. We chose a Crimson Belle, a Bushfield's Yellow and two prostrate varieties, a Marge Miller and a Blush. It was very tempting to buy loads more, but we managed to restrain ourselves. It wasn't easy but we did!
We'd been planning to plant camellias along our drive, under the plane trees, to replace some grevilleas we removed. I know, I know. Grevilleas are one of my favourite native plants, so what am I doing taking them out? Sadly, the grevilleas in question don't like the shade and were very straggly and dying. I still didn't like taking them out. Putting plants in the ground is way more fun.
It took us two or three days to prune out the grevilleas and then mulch the prunings, so they didn't go to waste. Hopefully you can see from the pictures below how badly they were doing.
We ended up with three lovely piles of mulch. Although, I'm always surprised at how little mulch we get given how big the piles of pruned branches are. But the mulch will be good on our garden (once we've let it sit for a bit) and will save us buying any.
The remaining pictures show the newly acquired camellias planted in the garden. They seem to have settled in. The taller varieties are flowering nicely. There are three as our friends P and C had gifted us one some time ago to plant in honour of my lovely Mum.
We are enjoying planting shade loving plants in our garden here. Our garden in the Perth hills was full sun all the way and, apart from some fruit trees and the veg patch, was fully planted with natives. We loved that garden and will always remember it fondly. It is nice to be making our stamp on this garden and to have the scope to plant a bigger range of plants.
Oh, and tonight we had some fresh dug spuds for tea. Humans one, slugs nil!!
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