In praise of the humble but hardy Agapanthus

Everything in the garden is crisp. It has been the hottest summer of the hottest year on record. Yet the humble Agapanthus is blooming in long avenues throughout my garden, and I  so very grateful for its hardiness. 

We gave away thousands of these plants after the Bob Cat dug up a hundred years' growth through the old orchards, but we judiciously replanted the long rows along the driveway and towards the back paddocks.

Everything else I impulsively planted before going into hospital in October, is dead. Even things that have survived here for decades are shedding their branches. There is a massive cedar in one corner which is probably as old as this house (1879) and it is throwing away branches in disgust, determined to survive.



Christmas for me in Australia is always announced by  rows of blue and white  Agapanthus. They are remarkably hardy, and so they are universally hated and banished as weeds. If we could make the nurture of Agapanthus more mysterious, they would not suffer such disrepute. Despite the hearty political correctness of some conservationists, ordinary people appreciate this wonderful weed. They lined up with their trailers and trucks when we advertised free Agapanthus.
Big bright heads of Agapanthus can be seen everywhere in the first week of December, and then they just keep  blooming on and on into the New Year. I love the big strappy and sappy fronds, as well.

I would like to be half as hardy as the Aganpanthus. After three weeks in hospital and many more weeks of rehab, I do have a working left leg and a right hip that is quite tolerable. I could go out into the garden now, if it was not so intolerably hot. Nice dry heat, but hot as hell.  It rained on Christmas day for several hours, but before that it had not rained for three months, and since then, nothing.

 I have once again brought in a truck of water and extravagantly doused the most needy plants. I suffer water envy when I see people in town giving their green patches a fifteen minute soaking. But plants are made hardy by this weather. Even the sparse Christmas rainfall worked some magic to bring a tinge of green to the gold paddocks.

Meanwhile we are doing everything to conserve water and save the garden. I resent every flush of the toilet, and every basin of water that goes down a plughole. Prolonged drought also cures some of my own greediness for green and leaf. It reminds me of life's essential vulnerability and fragility.

The garden lays beneath four inches of mulch, newspaper, manure and pelleted fertilisers, water retention crystals, and much hope. Remarkably the Pierre de Ronsard roses have burst into full flower and not the mean small florets of the other roses, but full clusters of cream petals. I will plant more de Ronsards this winter, as they are so thoroughly reliable even in drought.

Isn't it astonishing that the most glorious of plants, the rose, is the hardiest. I have actually lost one rose which I planted under an old apple tree - too late in the season, and too little care while I was away. The other roses are all struggling on. Better seasons will see better blooms.

It will rain again and the garden will flourish. Gardening is such an imprecise art. It is not therapeutic for people who need to control, regiment or torture plants. If you read the Genesis stories it becomes quite clear that Adam's sons were torn between the control possible with hard geometric structures, and the utter chaos of growing living things. My garden is dictating its own future on the basis of what proves hardy. Ultimately we build our own lives to our strengths and weed out the bit where we cannot excel.