Winter gardening tips from the NetFlorist Bunch:
Winter is coming (followed by an ominous rumbling akin from something out of Game of Thrones) and as every gardener, plant lover, botanist and naturalist will tell you is not just a tad chilly for us people. Plants also suffer from the cold in the winter months and quite often our gardens can become one of the many casualties of winter. We should just be grateful that our winters only last for a few months instead of the years and years as in Winterfel. While South African gardens are relatively lucky in terms of the climate, but don’t rest on your laurels; autumn is the perfect time to start preparing your garden for the winter months. Unless of course you’re winter colours are brown and dead.
South African winters are notorious for turning our lush beautiful green gardens into a rather dull, spindly brown canvas that will leave the family dog looking like he’s been rolled in cocoa powder and will make the inside of your nose as dry as the Sahara desert. One of the major sore spots of a winter garden is the lawn no matter what we do it usually turns brown and prickly and so uninviting that not even the dogs want to pay it a visit (if you know what we mean).
This winter your grass can be greener
The easiest way to ensure that the grass is greener on your side of the fence is to apply a good lawn dressing to the grass before the frosts start to fall in June and your soft verdure turns dead overnight. A decent, basic lawn dressing that is easy to mix yourself is 3 parts sand, 3 parts loam and 1 part peat (that made us giggle) and can be applied after you’ve aerated the lawn – which for the novice gardeners among us can be translated in to spearing your lawn with a fork but not a dinner fork that would take too much time and you’d destroy the cutlery. Among the many bonuses of applying a dressing is that the dark pigment of the dressing will help keep the grass warm during the day. Who knew that grass likes to enjoy a winter snuggle?
Now that you’re grass is sorted it’s time to turn the attention of your green thumb to keeping up appearances and adding colour to the winter green.
Keeping the bloom on your garden with perennial flowers and keeping birds happy
Flowers are a great way to keep the winter blues at bay and fortunately for us South African gardens can be a cornucopia of colour and a riot of birds that come and enjoy the flowers.
The most popular South African winter bloomers are the Irises, Lilies (which bloom all year round), carnations, tulips and of course our national flower the Proteas.
The iris is the perfect flower to plant in your winter wonder land as they are hardy and easy to grow and that pop of pure purple will lure all manner birds and beautiful bugs. In order for your Irises to bloom beautifully they need at least half a day’s sunshine and well-drained soil. Otherwise your Irises will resemble something unlike the divine Greek goddess that the flowers were named for.
Of course everyone’s favourite perennial is the tulip; these bright beautiful blossoms originated in Holland and at one point in time were worth more than gold – in fact fortunes were made and lost with tulips. Fortunately for us the pressure if off these pretty petals and we can simply enjoy the tulips bright colours and the way their stalks bend and grow.
If you live in an apartment or you have no green thumb to speak of you can simply fill your home with cut flowers that will perfume the air and bring joy to your heart.
