Cottage Gardening by the Book

I have several gardening books from which I take barrow loads of inspiration and snippets of advice. The one book I favour though is smaller than all the others, has no glossy photographs and was not written by a celebrity gardener but the information within its pages is specific to the cottage style of gardening I love and to the area in which I am growing my garden. 

 My favourite gardening book.

In a Brisbane Cottage Garden by Denise Horchner is a little book with big lists. Lists of hundreds of plants that Denise and her husband Henk (whom she affectionately nicknames "The Treasure") have grown successfully in their own cottage garden in a suburb not very far from where I live. There's lists for specific colours, different aspects, tricky spots, seasonal flowering, and my personal favourite, Plants for the Rotten Gardener! So, when I'm working on an area in our garden, and thinking about what might possibly grow well in that space, I open this little book to see what the Horchner's might recommend. Their localised advice offers me a much greater chance of success than would a gardening book written for the gardens of the Northern Hemisphere or even the southern states of Australia.

 Lavender grows in my cottage garden.

My own Brisbane cottage garden certainly doesn't look like impressive English cottage gardens and it probably looks nothing like the Horchner's garden either. Still, there are many plants growing in my garden now that give it a cottagey feel and that I found out about in the pages of this little local book. 

Salvias are another cottage garden favourite.

I'll be out in my cottagey garden this coming weekend. There is light pruning to do, mulch to lay down, weeds to keep in check, lettuce leaves to harvest and flowers to pick too. All of which will leave me happy and content:)

I hope you get to spend some time enjoying a garden over the coming weekend. 

Meg

Pumpkin Spelt Scones

Warm scones, fresh from one's own oven, are perfect for afternoon tea on a cool Autumn afternoon. Some scone lovers like theirs plain, some prefer the sweet surprise of sultanas or dates within but I love pumpkin scones above all others. 

Freshly baked pumpkin spelt scones.

This is how I make pumpkin scones at my place. If you have some leftover pumpkin, mash it up and you can make them too!

Pumpkin Spelt Scones

1 3/4  cups spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch sea salt
100g butter, softened
1/2 cup cooled, mashed pumpkin
1/3 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 220C then:

Sift flour and baking powder into bowl. Add pinch of sea salt. 

Cut up softened butter into cubes and add to the bowl.

Using your fingertips, rub butter into the flour until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Whisk together mashed pumpkin and milk. Pour into a well in centre of the flour mixture.

Use a table knife to gently cut and mix until a soft dough forms.

Place dough on a floured surface and knead very lightly to form a ball.

Roll or press out dough (not too thin) and cut out rounds with a cutter.

*Dip edge of cutter in little extra flour to prevent dough sticking to it.*

Place unbaked scones n a lined cake tin so they are almost touching.

Bake in hot oven until golden and your home is filled with smell of fresh scones!

The only thing left to do, once these scones are baked, is to wait impatiently until they have cooled just enough to eat. I wrap them gently in a loosely tied linen teatowel while I wait. Then, I slice them in two and top them with tart berry jam and freshly whipped cream. Delicious!

Meg

A Fragrant and Hardy Hedge

If you were to walk through our little front gate, early in the morning or later in the afternoon, you would be greeted at the moment by the fragrant flowers in our hedge of Michelia Coco. 

 The fragrant, creamy bloom of  Michelia Coco.

These beautiful, evergreen shrubs belong to the same family of plants as Magnolias. While their creamy blooms are much smaller than the often impressive blooms of their cousins, their heady fragrance leaves one snatching at memories when trying to describe their distinctive, fruity scent. To me, it is sweetly reminiscent of Juicy Fruit chewing gum! Others have said it smells like ripe bananas!

Michelia Coco frame our little front gate.

I've found these shrubs to be particularly hardy in our garden. They are planted, two either side, of our front gate in a full sun position that faces South West. It gets very hot there in the Summer but I rarely water them. They remain covered in leafy, emerald-green foliage that looks wonderful in the bunches of flowers I pick to bring inside. The blooms, which emerge from buds covered in a lightly-browned, soft fuzz, are creamy with little blushes of purple in their centres. Small, but very beautiful!

Native bees on a beautiful blossom.

Our resident native bees love these blooms too. In the morning, when that heady fragrance is released into the air, dozens and dozens of little native bees gather in the blossoms. There they work happily among the flowers that these shrubs are covered in right now. 

I am happily working out in the garden now the heat of the Summer has faded. I make sure too that I pause, and breathe in deeply, whenever I am near our blooming hedge of Michelia Coco. 

Meg