COOL CLIMATE GARDENS

This week Roadside Ikebana comes to you from Hobart the capital of our island state, Tasmania.

At the bottom right, of the view above, is the Saturday market in front of the 19th Century Warehouses and Bond stores of Salamanca Place. Mt Wellington is in the background.

The city of Hobart climbs up hills that surround the estuary of the Derwent river giving it a very picturesque setting.

Within the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens in Hobart is a Japanese Garden. It seems to me that the Hobart gardens are the only Botanical gardens in an Australian capital city that has a truly suitable climate for such a garden. When I first visited this garden four years ago, I really enjoyed the way they flourished in the cool climate here.

Laurie on a plank bridge over the lowest of a series of small ponds in the garden.

The second pond has a bright red curving bridge and this splendid stone basin being fed from a bamboo pipe.

From the top of the garden is a distant view of Mt Wellington providing 'borrowed scenery'. This garden was created in 1987 as a sister city project with Yaizu city in Shizuoka Prefecture.  
  

As we were leaving the Botanical gardens I could not resist photographing this very large bush of Japanese flowering quince.

This weeks ikebana is in a vase, by Jody Johnstone * , that I bought in Maine USA last year. Jody specialises in wood fired ceramics in the Bizen style. Her website is well worth a look.

I first arranged two bare branches from my apricot tree prunings and then added some Acacia Baileyana *. I think this will be the last of this wattle for this winter.

Greetings from Christopher

in Hobart.

26th July 2015

* Click on the blue text for further information