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Gardening: Worst Laid Plans
Think before you plant
Melbourne, Victoria, some years ago
The Silky Hakea was a mistake.
I had planted it to encourage birds. Every tiny white flower curl was packed with nectar, and the echidna-spine leaves kept the honeyeaters and fairy-wrens safe from prowling cats. The hakea was native to the area — at least before the eucalypts and grasslands had been cleared to make way for houses in the mid-1800s — and grew well in the volcanic soil of my garden.
Very well.
Within a few months, the sapling had become a shrub. Within a year, it had turned into a monster.
Oh, it was a pretty monster with profuse blossoms along the stems. Birds flocked to it; bees swarmed to it. But it was also a prickly mass of the sort found in the grimmest of Grimms tales.
I tried to prune it, but the leaves speared through the leather palms of gardening gloves. Something had to be done.
The garden was a little square bounded by a tall wooden fence held up first by a knotty wisteria and then by props and prayers.
Hot and parched in summer, chilly and wet in winter, the microclimate was perfect for Mediterranean plants. I could have gone for a cottage garden with well-behaved rosemary and lavender, but I…
