When we first moved into our little place, we got a gardener in to plant some gardenias on our balcony. The gardenias flowered exactly once before neglect over their second summer killed them. The soil was in such bad condition that even weeds couldn’t grow!

So I had to remove all the old soil, put in new soil, but some new gardenias and plant them. Sounds easy enough, but it took me about 2 months to complete!

The containers that held the gardenias are probably about 70 L, they’re massive! It took me three loads of soil for each planter, and I had three of them, to empty out the soil. Eventually, the soil removal took 3 weeks, but then the planters sat empty for another few weeks because I got distracted.

So last weekend I went to the garden nursery, mostly for a bit of a browse, then I saw that they had gardenias for sale at half price. So many varieties, which one to pick? I was initially going to go for the Four Seasons variety, but then the photo on the label didn’t look as appealing. I ended up settling for a variety called “Ocean Pearl”, which I later learned is an old variety of gardenia re-released under a new name (previously known as “Veitchii”).

I bought six Ocean Pearl gardenias, two for each planter. There were 3 per planter with the previous lot of gardenias that I killed, but I always thought they looked a little cramped. So, 6 pots of gardenias, 6 x 30 L potting mix, some perlite, fertiliser for acid loving plants and one Saturday afternoon later, I can say I have gardenias. Take a look:

Note the flower in the middle planter? She smells devine! If I’m [extraordinarily] lucky, the other buds may open up for me in a couple more days. Mind you, it’s raining something terrible in Perth right now, so I don’t really expect the flowers to open, but you never know.

I bought some Lavender seeds from Bunnings. It’s just some generic Mr. Fothergill’s seeds, nothing too special. I thought since I was going for a rather fragrant collection of flowers for my garden, that a dwarf lavender would be a nice addition. Only problem is that I have no idea where I’m going to put them!

Anyway, it’s the Munstead variety, also called English Dwarf. I thought they would look very nice in the 3 terracotta (yes, I know, sinful terracotta, but they’re so pretty!) pots I have. 2 of the pots are being used to grow cherry tomatoes (now that’s super sinful), but I expect them to finish fruiting, if they ever fruit that is, I kinda planted them in the wrong season since I was so eager to try to grow them. Anyway, after the tomatoes finish fruiting I’ll be throwing them out and planting the lavender seedlings in their pots. I think the purplish blue flowers would look quite nice against the orange red of the terracotta.

So anyway, I successfully germinated some of the lavender seeds. I’ve got 5 seedlings right now, but I’m afraid one of them might be dying on me already.

Here are a couple of photos.