Beautiful native flower bowl

Did you know that the Greek goddess of flowers is Flora?  It was a recent question in SA Weekend’s Brainwaves test and I should have known it, or guessed the answer. I have been picking native flora from Hindmarsh Island to deck my house in bowls of flowers.

There is a spectacular grouping of mature shrubs which, I suspect, have been planted by Hindmarsh Island’s local community revegetation volunteers on a strip of land adjoining old post and rail cattle yards. This native garden, just down the main road, is where shrubs are flowering beautifully in March.

Splendid Banksia bushes, Native Hibiscus, Geraldton Wax and the spidery Grevillea are all in flower and soon I have an armful of cut shrubbery.  Albany woolly bush and light green new sproutings of another variety of Banksia no longer in flower provide foliage.

Voila!  Here are the two vases – one of  only Banksia in different stages of flower and the coffee table flower bower of beautiful native flowers.

I wish I could bottle the pleasure this simple act gives me – and it beautifies the home.

NOTE: Hindmarsh Island’s community planting program has been running for 10 years, the last five gathering momentum with a large band of 15-20 volunteers caring for 65,000 baby seedlings in the community nursery near the Hindmarsh Island information

“We are replanting the whole estuary in 70 locations…not just Hindmarsh Island, but Mundoo Channel too,’’ says Angela, who is dressed in green overalls.

They are propagating 70 different species, which are all natives to Hindmarsh Island.

Yesterday, Sunday, March 20, was a propagation day and 15 volunteers were busily placing seeds in tiny black plastic tubes and bundling more mature seedlings for planting.

Already the volunteers have been responsible for 250,000 native plantings.

“Environmental volunteers come from all over the world to held with plantings in the region,’’ says Angela proudly.

Be Sociable, Share!

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a Reply