Greetings gardeners! Welcome to your intrepid gardening Girl Reporter’s first filing from our secret island location in Hong Kong. It’s a year since the current Mr Baxter and I shut the gate for the last time on our Australian backyard paradise and set off on our latest adventure.
We have traded a quarter-acre block in Queensland for the roof of a traditional house nestled in a higgledy-piggledy village on Lamma, one of Hong Kong’s many outlying islands. As predicted, my gardening adventures are much less ambitious here, but no less destructive.
It’s no surprise that in the transition my thoughts have been as much with what I’ve left behind as here, on the solid concrete of my new surroundings. What’s growing in my Australian garden? What does it look like after the ferocious summer? And what will it look like on my return?
Ah well, there have been new challenges filling the blank spaces between my wonderings and the excitement of having a roof garden to create.
A hanging garden made out of recycled drinks bottles on Lamma Island, Hong Kong.
Inspiration is all around. Hong Kong people love their gardens and are extraordinarily creative in getting things to grow in tight spaces.
My first challenge was the change in hemisphere. March is no longer autumn for Your Topsy-Turvy Girl Reporter, it is spring. This is traditionally the time of year when I look around to see what’s survived the winter and start feeling under pressure to make some plans.
But I’m rooted, in the very Australian sense of the word. No, not that one. The other one. It’s been a big year and I’m grateful to the Editor for not pressing me for a gardening column, until now. My horticultural efforts have not been my main focus, but there has been a bit done, and it’s not all been death and destruction, for a change.
Let’s start at the beginning, when we pitched up to our secret island hideout last April with the luxury of an entire roof to fill. The first priority was to splash out on a couple of big plants to give a bit of structure to the place, starting with a South African Jasmine (Jasminum angulare).
AND ALFIE MAKES THREE
Meet Alfie the Wonder Cat, the third – and most popular – member of the band. He wasn’t keen to come on tour, but he’s settled in better than I could have expected. He even has his own serviced apartment – a covered balcony with a separate alcove for his toilette. What’s missing, he reckons, is a bit of greenery, so expect him to feature regularly in my filings from a Hong Kong Garden.
My lovely assistant, the current Mr B. was immediately pressed into service, carting that bad boy around under my careful direction. Finally, we settled the pot into a corner and started filling up the space in front of it with smaller plants, to create at least one lush spot to look at while we filled up the rest.
The Jasmine looks great, with plenty of new growth but no sign yet of the big white scented flowers that it’s known for. This accords with my gardening philosophy, that things meant to put down roots in one place tend to take a little while to settle in when you move them.
The same is true of Girl Reporters. Consequently, the rest of the corner is now a bit tatty, frankly, and has suffered from more than my usual neglect. I will look back upon my life and say I should have pruned more.
I have tried not to spend a great deal of money so many of my plants have been grown from (mostly) pilfered cuttings and they have survived better overall than the camellia, rhododendron, and other purchases. Yup, prune baby, prune.
It wouldn’t be a traditional village house on Lamma without a pair of lions on the roof. Here is one of our guardians, looking down upon my efforts. A bit judgmentally, IMHO.
And feed. All my plants have suffered while I’ve struggled to find a good source of fertiliser. But I did get Mr B. to establish two small compost bins in another corner of the roof and there’s enough there to give everyone a good start to the growing year.
Another big purchase was a Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia), as a reminder of home. I understand it may not flower in a pot, but one big plant yielded three, two for the roof and one for Alfie’s apartment.
The biggest one became the anchor for another corner of the garden, where I grouped it with two pineapples, grown from the tops of some particularly tasty fruit, and some decorative succulents.
I experimented with a dragonfruit, scraping its tiny black seeds on to some kitchen towel and putting it in a pot with some soil sprinkled on top. Reader, it astonishes me to be able to report that I have baby dragonfruit plants.
Just as the roof was starting to look a bit like a garden, Typhoon Mangkhut decided to do his thing. We were uncharacteristically well prepared. I had visions of us struggling to remove the canopy, Hornblower-fashion, as we dodged flying pots in gale force winds.
But no! On that hot, muggy and still afternoon before the storm we had everything ship-shape and an entire garden crammed into a shed. Where it looked a bit more impressive, if we’re honest.
The Longan tree, before and after the storm.
The worst damage was reserved for the trees surrounding us, especially the Longan tree which gave us a summer full of illicitly acquired fruit. It too, rises with the spring, and is almost back to its old, lavish self.
Fun Fact: Longan literally means ‘dragon’s eye’ in Cantonese.
Putting the roof garden back together after the storm was an opportunity for some refinement, and to get things happening away from the corners. Even with the canopy, the challenge is providing shade for smaller plants and we invested in two large-ish palms to break up the boxy element of the roof. Tip of the old gardening hat to Mr B. there.
The palms, too, are looking a bit brown and sad after their winter of neglect. I think my first task of spring is to direct a little repotting and feeding action on them, before I get on with some of that pruning. Now, where’s my lovely assistant?
© Maria Spackman 2021
Further reading:
Experts question if 11 specimens on Hong Kong’s ‘Old and Valuable Trees’ list could have survived Typhoon Mangkhut with proper care – South China Morning Post, 22 September 2018
Want more Baxter? I also contribute the occasional music piece. Try this:
i THINK jACK WAS THE FIRST aUSTRALIAN MOST OF THE FOOTBALLERS HAD EVER MET.
aND MOST FOOTBALLERS ARE NOT ACADEMICS BUT THEY RECOGNISE SINCERITY WHEN THEY SEE IT.
hE PROVED HIS SINCERITY, ALL THE GUYS RESPECTED HIM.
tHAT’S NOT BAD, i THINK HE MAY HAVE INFLUENCED bERNIE, WHO, ULTIMATELY, i THINK, WAS A CLINICAL DEPRESSIVE.
jUKE BOX AND i USED TO HAVE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT f sCOTT fIRZGERALD IN THE BACK BAR WHILE THE MAD DOC WAS THROWING GLASSES AT RANDOM.
gOOD DAYS?
mEMORABLE,
i’MPLEASED TO TALK ABOUT THEM NOW.