The Blue Frog Set Arrangement

 

One thing about gardening that most of the gardeners who had realised or if its going to be a revelation to you (if you are a new gardener) is this one fact:
The Garden always constantly changing.

Its either the plant had outgrown the pot, passing maturity, needs pruning, reset or requires a make-over. Here is a make-over where I'm adding an addition plant - Maiden Hair Fern which was passed to me by my mum.

As you can see - I want to add some compact-ness in the whole collection rather than leaving it in a separate pot which somehow looks so messy.
Before I get over the details - I would like to share some of my secrets as how to keep them in a good optimum stage.

(Pic above)
This is a how it looks like after carefully removing the plants from the pot.
I found the because this pot only have one drainage hole - the soil seemed to be clay-mud like when over-watered. One of the dangerous thing about over-watering is that it can cause root rot and the end of the plant.

The root of the matter is the soil composition.
Its always important to check on the soil to identify how fast/draining is the soil.
This is one reason I add more sand into the soil mix to give the fast draining factor for the soil composition.

The picture below appears to be that the soil is very much clay based compared to any other soil mix.

After adding sand into the current soil mix and resetting back the plants the frog figurine appears to have a more dramatic effect with the Maiden Hair Fern as its background.

The EarthStar Bromeliad seemed to give a soft bronze-red notes to the whole collection with Xiphidium Caeruleum holding a barrier between the fern and the frog.

November Garden Updates - Part 1

Loading these pictures took me forever.
These had been constantly collecting in my database and I have to eventually delete the older ones as they had to be considered obsolete
(Well, most of the duplicates which been taken weeks and months prior to this)

This happens when I have too many pictures in the database - arranging them in sort of a way to tell a story which I end up forgetting or changing or changed due to a different inspiration mood swing.

Regardless,
I really want to push all the pictures by this month end.
(I thought of putting one in a day would suffice - I'm totally in error)
Right now - I'm in denial of having the ability to manage too many pictures in the database.
To delete or to show and the next dilemma of properly arranging them for easy viewing.

Leave aside about the factor of truth:
Living in modern times, one had hardly enough time of anything.

So what's my story here.
I had constantly changing my garden scape for years and finally found a setting that I'm totally happy with.
This setting just suit so well for these years
(hope I'm not wrong - well, it does feel like it)
Yeah.. the year end is coming and so is Christmas..
I may as well - settle all my garden works by this time frame as I can focus on other matters.

Do you know that this whole porch area is fully cemented?
The whole garden area here is all in potted plants.
My point here is all about arrangement with the right type of plants.
Here, I rarely have to prune or trim anything.
All they need is regular watering and routine fertilising.

If you notice - the stacking up of the pots on the bricks gives some body-height for the plant to show a fuller optimum space and visual impact.
Another factor is colours.
I often prefer to have variegated colours.
Pineapples, Pandanus & Agave somehow have those thorny, spiked & grassy effect in making that add difference.

Should I say:
Suddenly something red appeared..
Adds drama to my garden.

The lowest portion of my garden is filled with stones and pebbles and also together with plants. Black Velvet Begonias seemed to love this setting. I often advice most of the gardener's friends to do such a setting for them if they find that planting them on soil don't seemed to work.