Happy belated Saturday fellow garden lovers!
Today my little family of ferals were out for a bush walk. I’ll write up a post later in the week to share the views.
I heard my email pinging from my backpack and it just added to the anticipation. Six on Saturday posts to look forward to devouring this week! Excellent! I will no doubt harrass you all soon with questions about your gardens 😊.
Naturally I had to include my favourite photo as today’s number one…
1. Hovea pungens “Devil’s Pins”.
I made hubby stop the car so I could take a photo. I love Hoveas. The ones on our block are a smaller species. This one is a knockout even driving past the purple stands out to be admired.
2. Acacia puchella “Prickly Moses”.
This wattle is everywhere and getting ready to flower. Can’t wait!
I cut these out from around the internal house area because the thorns will go through a shoe. I use welding gloves and rip them out. We never poison them because when they dry the needles are even harder. But the yellow blossom is worth it. Grows like a weed as it is a resurrection plant and is one of the first to grow after a fire. 
3. Sturt Desert Peas seeds.
I ordered these from a rehabilitation company in Albany, WA. The seeds get soaked in boiling water for 5 mins. I’ve planted them in the sand retaining wall. They don’t like poor drainage and will drop dead unless careful about watering. Straight into the ground as they hate being transplanted too.
Last year the winter rains killed my plant (sobs). It is too early to put the seed in, but we’ve had an almost non existent winter (today was sunny at 25 degrees celcius). It’s going to be a HOT Summer this year. Hopefully that means Sturt Peas!!
4. Kangaroo paws are back woohooo!
I grew a red and green k-paw from seed last year (why only one? The kids tipped out my pots arrrgh!). Anyhow. It grew big enough to divide so I split it in three. They didn’t like that much. But now they’re in recovery. Can’t wait till I can share flowers with you all.
5. Syzygium australe (lilly pilly).
This one grows to about 10m and has sour purplely pink fruit when mature. My kids love to eat them so I bought three as tubestock. We’ll see if they survive the summer out here.
6. And to end with something utterly unrelated…. my little pot of string of pearls is flowering! I broke a little piece off Mum’s plant and it is taking off.
I hadn’t seen them flower before. Isn’t it pretty! 
Well that’s me for this Saturday. Just scraped in to join the fun but better late than not at all.
On that note… Please head on over to the Propagator’s blog at…
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com
Here you’ll find links to other gardeners sharing their Six on Saturday. It is worth it.
The Depression Free Garden 
Is the first one in the pea family?
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Yep Ali. A lot of our prettiest flowers are in the pea family. I can’t wait till the Chorizema and Gastrolobium flower. They have more reds and oranges and yellow pea flowers. Warm colours are my favourites.
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I was browsing the seed list of the Australasian Plant Society (A UK society) the other day and they list the Swainsona, and three species of Hovea, although not that one, which is gorgeous. The chances of growing them here must be slim indeed, but we always want what we can’t have. Well some of us do. I ordered some stuff.
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Wow that is awesome to be able to freely import seeds. Here the biosecurity laws are pretty strict even between states. You could always try the company I sourced seed from (their website is under the seed pic). Asking if they post overseas is always worth a try. Their list is massive. I even got 5 Boab tree seeds from them but no luck unfortunately. One germinated and then my rabbit ate it grrr.
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The Hovea must be an example of the glorious flowers you get on the west coast but we don’t seem to be able to grow over here successfully. I don’t seem to have much luck with K-paw either. They go well for a while and then become brown and reluctant about flowering. The flower on the string of pearls is a beauty, well worth a close up photo.
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K-paws are funny beasts. Here they thrive on neglect. Do yours get ink disease too or just go brown and dry? We do have awesome wildflowers here. It’s funny they’re usually very small flowers but gorgeous or shrubs that look scrappy all year and then explode and make them worth wanting. What sort of native flowers are typical of your area?
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The leaves on my K-paws go brown and dry, and then the plant sits in a lumpy clump and has only a couple of flowers. Or dies. We have the usual wattles, banksias, Grevilleas etc. Leptospermum I haven’t seen growing naturally but it does really well in my garden. It’s a favourite of mine. What we don’t have is large swathes of colourful natives such as the ones I’ve seen pictures of in WA.
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Oh I love Leptospermum! I have one at the block but it’s not doing much yet. Patience 😊. The wildflowers here are pretty special but it really is a small period of time unfortunately that you see the masses of flowers. What is your soil type? I wonder because my sister tried k-paws and she has rocky soil with a lot of clay content and they died as you described. We have a rocky soil with less clay and more sand (and a slope for good drainage) and they seem to do fine. Tempermental beasts 😊
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I think sandy soil is the key. We have a small layer of topsoil and then rocks and clay.
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The Hovea pic is stunning. A good way to start my Sunday. Thanks.
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Thanks Maureen 😊. Which native flower do you wait to bloom? Do you visit King’s Park in Spring when it looks it’s best?
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Something I love about Six on Saturday is meeting new plants! Your Hovea is brand new to me. Thanks!
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Really? Wow that’s awesome. Hubby told me recently plants we take for granted are probably interesting to others. Can’t wait to see your six. I’ll go now to peek.
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I’m in awe of your six, the plants are just so different to anything I’m familiar with. I wonder if I could persuade hovia to grow here, the colour is exquisite. A great six and well worth the wait! 🙂
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Oh thank you. I haven’t even got to look at many sixes yet but I’m going to begin properly now 😊.
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Hovea ROX! I have never seen that before! It is like a humongous bushy lupine! or maybe is it like a rosemary with lupine flowers. It is RAD!
I never would have thought that a string of pearls flower would be interesting. I do not pay much attention them. I just see the tan fuzzy seeds afterwards.
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Well Tony it seems like if you can grow them you’d have a market for buyers 😊. I’ll have a smaller species flower in a while at my block. It’s not as fancy but the leaf looks nicer for the rest of the year.
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The string of pearls flower is so sweet and the Hovea is a beautiful purple – well worth stopping the car for!
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I thought so too. The cars behind us probably got a bit grumpy but oh well they went around 😂
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That acacia looks vicious! Even the plants are trying kill you. Never mind welding gloves, you need a bomb disposal robot to prune that! I am intrigued by many of your six this week. Hope to see them flowering later. I’ve no idea what k-paw is, or sturt peas.
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Haha yeah they are nasty. But just wait till they bloom and you’ll see why I like them. K-paw (kangaroo paws). The one I have is Anigozanthos manglesii. I will have to scrounge up my photos from last year and do a post about plants inspired from comments. I have some of my first experiment with Sturt Peas.
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