Blooming busy!

What a great time of year up here on the hill as everything comes into bloom with all the different colours.  The beauty bush is a big ball of white, the rambling rose 25 ft up the arbutus has white bursts amongst the leaves, the purple Rosa Rugosa  has the first white flower of the year, the red and pink un-named roses scattered in the food forest have their beautiful scented white blooms cascading over the paw paw and prune plum.    From the perspective of a colour blind person, its all vibrant.  (Ann’s comment:  It’s all colours of pinks and blues and yellows…and Gord is just trying to be funny by calling everything white…the only colours he doesn’t see well are greens and reds…which is why he is always losing me in the garden.)

If you have not been by the house yet to wander through the gardens, this is the most opportune time, especially as this is the second to last Sunday  (May 24th) that we will have the doors open for wandering the gardens and the nursery sales before we close up  (after our last open house on May 31st) for the summer.  (We will reopen in the fall).

Plants that are in the nursery and producing this year…

Morello Cherry,
Lapins Cherry,
Chinese  Dogwood (Cornus kousa Chinense),
Captivator Jumbo red Gooseberry,
Korsor Elderberry,
Whitney (Highly edible) crab apple,
Red Sentinel (Highly edible) crab apple,
Honeberry various types,
Cornelian Cherry,
Autumn Olives,
Highbush cranberry,
and more!  (like heritage tomato plants with flowers)

We have to confess that last year when we closed for the summer, we enjoyed snacking on the various fruits on the nursery plants that ripened over the summer .  Can you blame us?

Things to view in the gardens… (sorry there’s no photos…been SOOOO busy…you’ll have to come out to see)

The Capulin Cherry is blooming for the first time… a fruit we have yet to see,
The mulberries are blooming,
The grafted pear onto hawthorne have all taken,
The Black Amber plum is LOADED!  OMG!
The Anna hardy kiwi is growing extremely strong for being a 2 year old,
The 5  year old Puget Gold Apricot has maybe 40 fruit this year, the 2 year old has 2,
Tomatoes and Tomatillos with fruits that are set and growing,
Ginger and Tumeric  doing extremely well,
Sweet lupines maybe 6 ft tall?
The new Chestnut grove…

Come see how we outsmarted wood bugs  from devouring our squash and cucumber transplants.  (Ann’s comment:  best not to brag about that Gord…nature always has the last laugh…as she did with our entire sugar snap pea crop).  The new growth on the tea plants is simply AMAZING… and they are flowering.  A bonus is the fact that the abundant carnivorous yellowjackets have been on top of the cabbage moths and so there has not been any cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi or brussel sprout deaths.  The downside was our favourite little brown/red squirrel (white for Gord) ate over half of the American Chestnut seedlings.

The gardens are one month ahead… and what does that look like… just gotta come see.  It is looking wild!

Open Sunday May 24th  10am-2pm, and final day May 31 10am-3pm.

3295 Compton Road, East Highlands, Victoria.