When disaster strikes
On the night of Friday 22 July, 2016 or maybe the morning of Saturday 23 July, the last of our 85 year old pine trees (Pinus radiata) crashed to the ground. Over that night in Canberra we had wind gusts up to 80 k/hour and the ground was sodden from record rainfall. We had the wettest June ever recorded in the capital this year.
Lots of plants crushed
The venerable pine removed most of the plantings in the bottom right hand corner of the garden. It took out our collection of callistemons, now 13 years old, a large Casuarina cunninhamii of similar age, and our much beloved Silky Oak (Grevillea robusta). The ‘Canberra Bells’ correas that I talk about in the section on correas are now flattened, so are a group of Hakea eriantha. The well-established front hedge of Callistemon salignus and Callistemon ‘Firebrand’ will have to be resurrected in that section. We also lost our mature Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha) in another section of the garden.
However, as is always the case in disasters, many treasures were spared – a group of Cordyline stricta nursed along through the Canberra winters, a recent planting of Myoporum floribundum x batae, Brachychiton ‘Griffith Pink’, a large patch of Eremophila subfloccosa and several Calothamnus.
We have removed the old pine trees (at vast expense!) from around the boundary of our property over the last few years. They were senescing and dropping limbs, but we left one last pine which looked healthy and was a popular perch for our local birds. This tree also had a nest-box on it which had been used in past seasons. It is still in use, Ben discovered, by a ring-tailed possum, even after the demise of the tree. The possum does not mind that his home has gone massively down-market!
Myoporum floribundum x bateae
We must look on this area as an exciting opportunity to plant anew. I well remember the 1987 ‘Great Storm’ in England, the worst for over 300 years, which claimed many lives and felled over 15 million trees. I then admired the horticulturalists at Kew, while mourning their great trees, also managed to see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to plant afresh. Here, in microcosm, we have the same opportunity.
Second Disaster
Hailstorm 20 January 2020
Canberra suffered a violent hailstorm which cut much of the foliage on our plants to ribbons. The waterlilies, which were in bloom, were shredded into waterlily salad.
Third disaster
At midday, 29 November 2020, a windstorm brought down half of our Eucalyptus sideroxylon rosea planted in 2005 and a large branch from Eucalyptus globulus ssp. maidenii, planted in 2006 which damaged the upper sand garden considerably.
