h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here it is:-

http://gallery.me.com/flyingants#100199

click on 'toy box's gorgeous plant'

Hi Mar, yes I make compost all year from food stuff, earth and some weeds.

The seedling thing is tricky. I've learnt from experience that some species just can't be transplanted from pots to the ground, any root disturbance causes death, some can though, but still the slugs get them because when you first replant a plant it is very vulnerable until the roots have settled. Snails and slugs seem to know which plants are vulnerable...maybe they give off a chemical? Anyway plenty are surviving and I will grow some in pots that are perenials and plant out in late autumn when snails and slugs have gone. Every year I learn more about the finer points of a garden, and the balance between having a 'garden' and having wild parts where nature takes its course. Yes I am most certainly not a 'garden centre seasonal gardener'. I can't tell you how much I have learnt this year from really careful observation of bird behaviour, insects etc and the way everything interacts. We are having a very mild spring after a cold winter, I think its helped everything after many years of too mild winters for Britain.

I'm glad you enjoy this thread.

Hi preciosa,
I enjoy it because you are the amiable host of this mind-refreshing Romantic Hardcore Garden

And because there´s always genuine beauty. In feeling-words and pictures.

like that beautiful plant of TB really lovely. Never seen it before.

As soon as my red lily flourishes I´ll send you a picture of it.

To bed now I´m exhausted

Good morning my friends

I´ve woken up with a lot of kisses, I´ll deliver them to you, this for Effers, this for Toy Box, Arnold and all these for anyone else who wants free sunny kisses


Off I go, I´ve to study,
Mis queridos amigos, Have a very good day

These are typical plants in a mediterranean garden, but you can also have them there if you got a sunny place. They are really hard and beautiful, bougainvillea, jasmin, pasiflora, etc.

http://articulos.infojardin.com/boletin-archivo/2004-julio-18-consejos-trepadoras.htm

Muchas gratias for that link Mar.

I have two types of Jasmine. Summer flowering and also winterflowering which covers the wall outside my kitchen. All winter I have these mass of yellow flowers outside my window. I also have a small hawthorn which I grew from a berry I bought back from a visit to Crete. Unlike the English one I have, which is now a tree, it is still quite small and after 9 years has yet to flower, but it appears to have no problem surviving our winter. I collected it from one in a mountain village where the winters can also can be quite cold and wet so although it doesn't get the summer's heat its used to, it can easily survive. I can't wait for it to flower one year.

From your link its given me another nudge to get a Passion flower plant. I think it would do well in my garden against the fence facing the sun, but I'm a bit nervous because they are totally rampant plants. I remember a few years ago when I first saw one growing a few streets away. When I saw the flowers I thought maybe I was having a funny turn and was dreaming. It is hard to believe that such an amazing flower could exist. Apparently it is called the Passion flower after the 'Passion of Christ'. The number of stamens, the number of petals, sepals etc supposedly relate to Christian numerology..

Hi all Back about fifteen years ago I had a Jasmin bush? which I enjoyed very much and last year after Websailor put up some pic's of her Pasionaria(her flickr pic's page 7) I decided I wanted one, my MIL has a large one in her front garden ,as they are in the shops at the moment flowering over here I will be shopping for one soon, I think I will go for a more red/pink one

Effers Is your garden marked on the Hootoo map? wonders what it would look like on there ,I'm on the map and I can make out where the Pheasants wilderness bit is(front right) and my deck cover etc even our small garden shed at the back, going to try a new pic up from last years bbq showing just my lickle pond

Sorry a bit small

Forgot this bithttp://www.bbc.co.uk/go/dna/h2g2/brunel/F1694533/ext/_auto/-/http://www.flickr.com/photos/21128589@N02/

Good morning,

How strange the hawthorn is yet to flower, maybe starting from berry takes much longer. But it´s great that it could grow, and it has the adding value of coming from Crete! I know two different kinds of the plant, the wild and the domestic one. I prefer the smell of the last one. It´s more subtle. I had one in the balcony and after closing it to have a bigger living-room I planted it in the comunal garden. It´s lovely.

The passion flower or pasiflora is amazing, I had the same feeling as you when I saw it for first time. It´s original from southamerica wet forests, Spanish or Portuguese misionaries-not sure who- gave that name around the 17th century. There were very important botanic expeditions to America. Precisely there´s an exhibition now in the Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid about one of the greatest botanists from Europe, Celestino Mutis. It´s until May 25th, so if you fancy a visit... and the Prado Museum, it´s next door. (This Sunday ends an exhibition of Francis Bacon. I promised myself to go there but I´m still f***ed with my leg)

passiflora contains alcaloids. It´s quite used to "soothe the nerves" and the fruit, fragant and mucilagose (sp?) is used to prepare refresing drinks. Never try it. I did try a recipe (from a wonderful book of medicinal plants I have) with green grapes. In summer the grapes are unmature but their juice with water and sugar made an excellent cool drink. I should end the lecture here I have a tendency to be a bit barroque about anything and dont want to tire you.
This is the Botanic garden:
http://www.rjb.csic.es/jardinbotanico/jardin/
at your right you have Las plantas del mes, This month plants, click on the climbing rose tree... Maybe you may want it for your fence. Those tiny pale yellow roses have a very special smell, I call them the Joy roses. I love them.

off to study, have a good day

Anold,

Haven´t you got any bonsai?

a good day for all of you

This is another kind of passionaria

http://www.jardinenuruguay.com/Fichas%20de%20plantas/pasionaria1.jpg

a bit different from the one we grow here:

http://bloguito.blogia.com/upload/Pasionaria.jpg

and here the fruits:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_WE99MswEj38/SJbHBwbEPfI/AAAAAAAAAXE/_ujYi22kYDw/s1600-h/Racimos-frutos%2520pasionaria.jpg

Hi Mar and all , That bloguito one didn't open for me , I don't think it was the first one(jardinenuruguay) but it was closer to the one I was looking at last year,
I'm not really into Bonzai myself more a natural type of person but I do appreciate them, in my experience a potters(I was) garden tends to be either for food or a little wild ,mostly both ,Bonzai in the west means to be kept small, whereas many people over here pay gardeners to design, put in and keep up their garden which includes tree clipping making crazy shapes , same goes for dogs I prefer a normal dog rather than a toy ,I didn't pick our toy poodle my daughter did.Paying someone to look after my bit of land is not really on the cards i'd rather it went wild , in most of the gardens next to the houses in my pic's you may notice the trees are all cut not left to go natural , to me that is Bonzai too,
I think I have a craftsman's /artist's eye which my Geek friend thought when he gave me these cameras thinking I may get some interesting shots . Ramble ramble

This link should work, I think that´s the one we know here in Europe, scroll down a bit:
http://fichas.infojardin.com/trepadoras/passiflora-caerulea-pasionaria-flor-de-la-pasion.htm

I also prefer natural, sort of wild gardens. I used to dislike the idea of twisting and forcing in bonzais, but after seeing my elder brother´s garden in Málaga, a kind of zen tropical one, I changed my mind. Besides, my brother has quite a few of "natural" bonsais. He walks a lot in the country side and has found real jewls. He has a olive tree "shaped by goats", he founded in the hole of a rock. He also does another Japanesse floral thingy, I don´t remember the word, it´s flowers growing on a very little amount of soil over a flat stone. He brought me a japanesse calendar with pictures of them. I love them. It´s amazing how much beauty is in such reduced and apparently precarious place.
He also takes rocks not erosioned, another japanesse word I forgot. It has to do with a kind of symbolism (Maybe I´ve already told you about it) If you look at the stone you´ll find that it seems a huge mountain.

> I know two different kinds of the plant, the wild and the domestic one.< Mar

Here the flowers of the wild hawthorn are always white I think, the domesticated one can also be white but also red. The blossom of mine is white but with coral pink margins. I had not seen one like it before, so you can imagine when it eventually flowered after about 7 years I was very excited to see its colour. I kind of think of it as a bit like me, a funny mixture of wild and domesticated. I also liked that it had suddenly appeared in my garden - its berry presumably dropped by a bird. I have several plants that suddenly appeared, due to birds dropping berries/fruit - a holly, the lime/linden and a rasberry bush They love them as food in the autumn. Last year I took quite a few photos of the hawthorn's amazing blossom, but they were slightly blurred because that was before I realised that my digital camera could be fixed to my tripod, and I had to fiddle a lot with manipulating the images on the computer. This year I will take more photos that should be really sharp. It will blossom very soon. I think the Cretan one is so small and slow growing is because it has not evolved to grow in an English climate. Your brother's garden sounds amazing.

Hi Anold. Yes I love 'natural' and 'wild' as well....with a smidgin of domestication

Mar I just checked out your first link of that other type of Passionaria.....

Hi Effers , I've just had a go at cutting a bit more grass, can't remember the name of my cutter but it's the one I always cut too much(it's got a six ft handle with a big wood cutting blade on the end and a two stroke motor, that's why I've just stopped I was cutting under the Mulberry tree ( that must have come from bird droppings ) and suddenly realized those big leaves laying out cut shouldn't have been My wifes gonna be mad (page 11 My flickr) , so I stopped for today .

Earlier I went back to the home centre to ask about and take a pic of a plant I saw yesterday, it looks like a Passion flower but my camera still read my card was full when I know I emptied it yesterday when I had the same problem, turned out it is not a type of passion flower but something beginning with Tokai ****** , which means Time something , it was all a light purple except the stamens? which were green ,
Have to be very careful what I do next in the kitchen, don't want to make any more mistakes today

The weather is beautiful here and I have added a few more photos to 'Inner City 2009'

http://gallery.mac.com/flyingants#gallery


When the hawthorn blooms though, I shall give it, its own 'album'.