OK, since you all said you enjoy photos - haha - I thought you might be interested to see the stages of how I transformed this garden bed. Here is what it looked like at the beginning of last year. The previous owners had planted 2 huge cycads, which were quite yellow & sickly - and also really prickly. I hated the look of them and as I said, I really HATED the gravel mulch as it absorbed heat like mad. This bed is next to my study, where I work, and the room has no air-conditioning, so it was unbearable sitting in there in the afternoons when the gravel would radiate all the heat it had absorbed from the midday sun... This was taken in May 2017... And here's the bed after the gravel had been removed in Aug 2017. That was our mid-winter and the section of the bed closest to the white wall was completely in shade all day... I wasn't sure what to plant in there - it was really difficult finding plants that would be happy to grow in mostly shade but could also cope with 2 hrs of very intense direct sunlight each day... You can see the gardenia "tree" in the left corner above - I originally planted that in the ground. And then I kept hearing people say gardenias don't do well in Perth's alkaline soil... so I decided to move it into a 1/2 wine barrel instead, with acidic potting mix. Also, it was raised up and closer to the light. And here's the bed in Oct 2017 when I finally found the stepping stones I liked. It took me ages as I didn't want the usual square or rectangular pavers - I wanted something that looked like irregular natural stone slabs. The ones I found are actually moulded from cement but they look "natural" ;-) I'd also started finalising what I wanted to plant in there. I put in 2 plectanthus "Velvet Elvis" in the far right corner, together with some cyclamen - and then the 3 gardenia radicans under the window, and then a polygala bush and a delphinium (out of the shot). On the left side, I had the gardenia tree in the wine barrel, with some bedding begonia and then I had a spot I was saving for a hydrangea bush - and then I planted a clematis (Proteus), a foxglove, an alstroemeria, a delphinium, some dianthus (pinks) and 2 hollyhock seedlings right by the wall (you can see they're still tiny in the picture above). And finally the star jasmine at the end of the row on the left. Here's a view of the bed from my study window, after I finally got the hydrangea! I had to wait ages to get it as nurseries don't stock them until summer arrives. This was in Nov 2017. You can see that the hollyhock seedlings had started growing and the clematis had 1 bloom! :-) I was saving that gap on the left for a rose, as that's the sunniest corner... And here's Charles Rennie Mackintosh joining the others at last... And here's a picture of the bed taken yesterday morning. It's frightening how fast things grow here - the hollyhocks shot up in Jan and you can see the gardenia tree has put on a lot of growth as well. I had to add a shade cloth above part of the bed to protect the hydrangea and some of the other plants as direct summer sun was too strong, even for just 2hrs, and they were burning really badly. Well, I hope you've enjoyed seeing the transformation! ~ HY

Lol! Oh that's funny about the pee! Maybe not so horrible if it was your own pee- just don't do it in the garden, one may unintentionally get stung somewhere else! rotfl... I had heard urine was good for fertilizing acidic plants like gardenias too. I remember people used to advise peeing on jellyfish stings and there was a lot of public peeing down at the beaches lol. It was on the news too. Then the scientists said, no urine didnt work for jellyfish. Who knows why, maybe because too many people peeing in public lol. Vaporvac, thats intersting about the nettles losing potency after cooking. I wish the nettles would stay in the wild here! We had a lot of untypical rain this winter. It seems like when we have cool wet springs, it much worse for nettles. At least once the temps start heating up good, the nettles die out till next spring.

In its third year in my garden, Huntington Rose is not like any other rose I have, in foliage and growth habit. It is not like a modern rose at all, but more like an old rose, or even a bramble. Flowers are quite small, less than 2" in diameter, which was a big surprise. They do not last at all in the heat, not much more than 1 day. At the beginning of the season, the flowers smelled like banana cream pie, rather unusual, but as the season has gone on, the fragrance is just a light rose fragrance. Although all this may not sound very attractive, I find it to be quite a charming rose. I haven't grown CRM. Foliage has seven leaflets. Flowers in sprays, although all the buds do not open at once. So far, growing more like a climber, or vine, with long and multiple basals. Look at all that growth. This is not usual for roses in my garden, and in the first two years there was hardly any growth at all. Flowers get crispy quickly in the heat. Early in the season. Not a good photo, but you get the idea. Weak necks, small flowers. Does not look like a modern rose to me. I wonder if this rose performs very differently in different climates. I'm keeping it, for now, to see how it does as time goes on.

Huh.... I'll add it to my 'short list' of possible Austins to get. Seems SOOO odd that the Austin people themselves have no clue what will grow where and in what zone. You all are a better resource seemingly! Thank you.