As autumn leaves us behind and the first day of winter arrives with the Winter Solstice tomorrow, I thought it fitting to take a stroll around my storm-battered garden to capture the beauty that remains and to remember that some of our most striking inflorescences belong to the winter-flowering flora.
The ivy gave its last display just before the first storm, which has now completely denuded it, leaving just the stems intertwined in the dead coprosma which it covers so beautifully in summer.
The bromeliads all flower at different times, but mainly in the cooler months, and this is one of my favourites. This variety doesn't have the viciously serrated edges on the leaves and I can de-snail without looking as though I have fought a duel with an expert swordsman!
In front of the property we have a collection of aloes (all coming into bloom in the next few weeks) and leucadendrons which are giving a great display of new growth in pale yellow and orange bracts, giving the impression of lit candles. The stunning blue agapanthus and pink and white wind flowers which grow in between were a good choice to provie year-round colour, although I have to confess that it was pure coincidence!
A rock rose and another spectacular indigenous plant which has a profusion of shiny pink petalled flowers all summer lurk among these leucadendrons, with a bright yellow vygie rapidly covering the ground around them all. They can fight it out, and may the best plants win!
Another of my favourite bromeliads - they are actually all my favourite!
And here we have the gorgeously coloured seeds of the clivias which are so prolific in my garden. I must have 100 seeds this year, which I will scatter under the trees and enjoy watching them grow over time;
Finally, the big piece of kelp that I dragged up from the rocks last year did its job and my old lemon tree has outdone itself - although having barely a leaf on its lichen-covered branches, the crop of lemons will see us through winter!
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