Plant Lovin’ – NSW Christmas Bush

When Christmas means summer, sun, beaches and BBQ’s the landscape around you looks a little different to the traditional fir trees and snowflakes that symbolise a northern hemisphere festive season.  Sydney is the natural home to one of the most gorgeous christmas plants, the New South Wales Christmas Bush.  I have been noticing a lot of NSW Christmas bush plants in the gardens around our new place, it’s making it feel a lot like christmas.  While we lack an actual plant in or gardens, I think I might take myself up to the new Harris Farm Markets up the road and pick myself up a bunch of “flowers” to help decorate Drawn Outdoors HQ!

So here’s the Christmas Bush low down…

Name: Ceratopetalum gummiferum – NSW Christmas Bush.  There are Christmas bushes native to other states of Australia, so don’t forget the NSW bit!

Description: An evergreen large shrub or small tree that generally grows to about 4-5 metres high.  The best feature of this plant are the “flowers” that are spectacular around Christmas time.  The real flowers of this plant are small, white and relatively insignificant, but as the flowers are pollinated and the fruit develops, the sepals surrounding the fruit enlarge and give a reddish pink flower like appearance

A great photo showing the white flowers and the red fruit and sepals developing. Photograph from http://www.friendsoflanecovenationalpark.org.au

What you’ll love about them: They’re native to the Sydney region, so you’ll feel like you’re doing your bit for biodiversity conservation.  If you’re a Christmas lover, this plant will always add a bit of garden colour to your Christmas decorations.  In terms of garden design, the NSW Christmas bush works best in a bush garden style, but can work equally as well as a feature in a more traditional style garden.  They can work well as a screening plant or as a feature, though when they’re not in flower they aren’t anywhere near as spectacular as when they are.

The gorgeous sepals and fruit of the bush look like flowers photo from Wirreanda Nursery

Basically, these plants are bright, fun, festive and easy.  They are a feel good plant that will generally make you smile and with a few fairy lights strung amongst the branches you will have a traditional Aussie Christmas tree in your own garden!

What they love: Sun! They love it hot and a little bit dry.  They are the perfect temperate climate plant and can stand a little bit of wet, a little bit of cold, but really they like it nice and sunny and dry.  You can give them a little bit of native plant food, but they’re generally pretty happy.  They do like a bit of a hair cut after “flowering”, and you can be pretty generous with how mush you trim.

The not so great bits: There aren’t a lot of bad things about this plant.  It’s relatively low maintenance, it will just look after itself and it doesn’t drop too many leaves fruit or flowers.  It looks good all year round and it looks great in the middle of summer.

Great as a bunch of flowers for Christmas! Photograph from http://www.friendofflowers.com

I have given a few NSW Christmas Bush plants as christmas gifts over the years and it always goes down a treat.  If you’re stuck for a gift for a garden lover, give a NSW Christmas Bush a try.

Sam

A trail of terror…

The Daredevil goes by a couple of other names, there’s the Super B, our little terrorist and my personal favourite, Mr Destructacon.  There’s also the nice gentle ones like cuddle bug and gentle Ben, but today was definitely a Mr Destructacon kind of day.  I think I’ve spun from one minor clean up to major hassle all afternoon!

Let me explain a little further.  Normally on a Tuesday I only have the Daredevil at home with me.  The Drama Queen would generally spend the day in child care.  But today we had a little outing to get some immunisation shots, 18months for the Daredevil and 4years for the Drama Queen. So, like a responsible mother I’ve tried to keep things calm.  Have an inside relaxed kind of afternoon. It’s rainy outside, so outdoors really wasn’t an option anyway.  My munchkins have had other ideas, particularly the Daredevil.  My plan was for a quiet and crafty afternoon, but like best laid plans things have gone a little pear shaped!

While the Drama Queen has been relatively calm, despite the occasional snap at her over excited brother, the Daredevil has sniffed out and found almost every kind of destruction his little frame can handle!  The problem today has been that he has been really quite stealth like with his destruction and it is only by chance that I’ve found the more creative and difficult to rectify misadventures.  As I type, he is trying to unload the dishwasher – really helpful if he were 10 years older, though I have a feeling when he is 10 years older he will have no interest in any form of household appliance!

We managed to cut out the tulle for the pink and purple (yes, the Drama Queen’s colour choices) Christmas pom poms, but the lure of ABC for Kids became too strong so they haven’t progressed much further. We I have made the green jelly that will hopefully set before desert time.  But beyond these small achievements, our day has been a joyful chaos, fortunately free of any major damage to property or person.  I’ll let the few photos I have managed to take speak for themselves…

Do I look like trouble???

I managed to stop this one before all the DVDs followed the games out of the cupboard

The unpacked dishwasher Daredevil style...

These were my new embroidery threads, I guess they still are, but with the Daredevil touch!

But then I found gems like this, he has set the table for dinner with his and the Drama Queen's cutlery

and this is as far as our pink and purple pom poms got!

Ahhhh…. nearly time for dinner, and Mr Perfect’s on the way home.  A Daredevil shared is a disaster halved!

Sam