I'm not referring to my age here! Every few weeks when I head south to New Plymouth for a hair appointment at Elwin Evans I also pop into Big Jim's Garden Centre, one of those few remaining independent garden centres around that offers better variety. In spring, around the time of the Taranaki Garden Festival , they offer a selection of what they call "vintage" plants. As you might expect, I load up and bring these back to Struan Farm.
It seems my taste in gardening doesn't run to what is particularly "fashionable" or "on-trend." I've known for some time that my taste in flowers and shrubs leans toward "vintage" or what some people here called "old-fashioned." They don't necessarily mean that as a complement, usually it implies something out of date, that time has passed by. I had to laugh, the current issue of NZ Gardener magazine has an article about the return of hydrangeas, as if they ever went away. I'm always ahead of these things, it seems they're not just for "nanas" at the moment. Isn't that a relief, aren't we glad to know that?! Plant hydrangeas now and be trendy!
In addition to astrantias, I returned home with two different colours of "Tradescantia andersoniana," also called "Moses in the Bulrushes." We have one of these currently in the Homestead's roadside woodsy garden, so I was interested to learn, finally, what it is. My only problem now is that in doing further research I've learned it is related to a plant called "wandering willy" or "wandering jew." I've just emailed Weedbusters to double check that this particular variety is okay to plant, won't be invasive. What we have in the gardens now hasn't spread, so I'm thinking it's okay. But we've seen that plants like Japanese anemone and aluminium plant, which are still being sold in garden centres, can spread and become noxious weeds even if they aren't technically defined as such, and I don't want to make a mistake by not doing proper research.
So these won't get planted until I hear back from the experts either way. The astrantias will.
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