My Dry Tropics Garden: Hot Loud and Proud

Friday, December 31, 2010

Gazanias .... like rays of sunshine in a garden!

It's Summer here Downunder and our 'wet' season has started with a bang! During December, which is the first month of our Summer, we experienced weeks of showery rain with thunderstorms, then a cyclone passed close by dumping torrential downpours of rain and over the whole month we had endless weeks of gloomy grey skies ... it's this time of year that one of my favourite perennials really struggles.

Yes, it's true that Gazanias are heat tolerant, sun tolerant, drought tolerant .... so it definitely suits my dry tropics garden for most of the year.

Here in the southern hemisphere Gazanias are perennials and one of my all-time favourites. Any sun-loving plant, that thrives in hot weather and survives on very little water is a welcome addition to my garden.

Right now, though, hot dry sunny spots are hard to find ... and the clumping Gazanias in my garden are not showing as many bright cheerful faces as usual.

Usually these bold colourful sunrays burst open at sunrise and then close up for the night. But when the sun is hiding behind a thick grey cloudcover that blankets the entire sky, they hide their bright shiny faces.

Our 'wet' season is such a hard time for these plants. Too much water causes them to rot and too little sunshine means they start to die back.

I have finally learned my lesson regarding growing Gazanias here in my particular spot of north-eastern Australia. Whilst they thrived all year round during the many drought years out in the garden beds, when the usual 'wet' Summer seasons returned just over two years ago, I had to re-think the way I used Gazanias in my garden. There were huge clumps of them filling quite a few corners of my outdoor garden beds and I lost them all after the torrential rainy seasons soaked the ground for weeks and weeks.

So, now I have them planted in my garden beds only from Autumn through to Spring, which is our 'dry' season, but when the Summer arrives, they go straight into pots. Doing this means I can now keep them going from one year to the next in this particular corner of the world!