by Elizabeth Shaheen
As happens each year in January upon our imminent return from Thailand, my passion for plants takes over my sensibilities and the day before our departure is spent by my washing off the roots of the plants that have captured my heart and treat them with insecticide and fungicide – roots and all. It is imperative if you wish to bring plants into Bahrain that the roots are completely void of soil. It is also vital that the plants are treated with insecticide and fungicide not only for your garden’s sake, but also for the sake of Bahrain’s environment.
This said, no sooner did we touch down in Bahrain at night I became extremely ill from food poisoning.
The culprit was a tuna sandwich in Bangkok’s airport-lounge.
Despite my ailment, it was of the utmost urgency that I potted-up these plants the following morning at the crack of dawn, working till dusk.
The second day I spent potting up the cuttings. The third day involved planting the bulbs and moving around the garden attending to one task after another.
Since then, I haven’t stopped working in the garden from morning till evening, allowing myself a half-hour lunch-break!
I potted-up the water plants in planting baskets and placed them in three old bathtubs, each filled with around four to six inches of water and covered them with plastic to keep warm.
However, my utter greed necessitated our providing a permanent home for them.
At first, I thought that I could charm my husband into agreeing to create a new pond in the lawn, where the large trees shade it and therefore have rendered a sizeable area grassless.
I didn’t win this one. And I’m rather glad that I didn’t. For we have removed this area and double dug and fed a new shrub and perennial bed to which the Plumeria obtusa, which takes centre-stage in the lawn, will provide for our new plants merciful shade in the summer and permit winter light at leaf-fall in winter.
I decided to create two further water gardens in the patio area where the tennis-court once stood and built to last till eternity.
Featuring in this area and its extension is a formal lily pond, lagoon and rectangular water gardens.
Whilst I attended to other garden tasks, Ashraf our garden-hand, Wilson our driver and Francis our housekeeper, carried out the arduous missions of preparing the ponds and new plant-bed.
We also engaged the additional help of Ismael and Nesmadeen our garden-hands working on Shaheen Gardens.
All of them worked with great fervour as if as excited to see the results as I was. Tilly the cat insisted on supervising the tasks, which was wholly gratuitous.
Following my explicit instructions, they dug each water garden four-and-a-half feet wide and 10 feet long.
The first layer was dug to a depth of one foot and one foot wide, shelving to take the marginal plants.
They then dug down another foot to take the water lilies and plants that prefer deeper water, in this case two feet.
Ponds should have a depth of “at least” 18 inches and should hold oxygenating plants, especially if you are not able to install a pump to circulate the water.
In these ponds, I don’t want the water to circulate and I have plenty of oxygenating plants, which I shall talk about in a later feature.
Please do not think that a pond will use too much water, for after the initial fill, the topping-up uses far less water than a garden border.
The seedlings for spring display were screaming to be transplanted and there are hundreds of them.
The packets of wild flower seeds of England have done extraordinarily well and I thinned them out using a dibber – as I did with all the seedlings – holding the seedlings by their leaves rather than their stems.
Broken leaves will be replaced but a broken stem would render the seedling certain death.
Among these plants is the wonderful cornfield poppy Papaver rhoeas, which is also known as Flanders poppy and is an emblem of Remembrance Sunday in the UK, the Sunday nearest 11th November when those who were killed in the First and Second World Wars are commemorated.
Other varieties of Papaver have also done well and these include Papaver rhoeas ‘Shirley Series’.
I then set-to and began pruning the deciduous shrubs, climbers and trees and tidied up the plants throughout the garden as I went.
I really must invest in a tool belt, for when something requiring my attention catches my eye, I tend to down the tool in hand and search for the tool needed for the eye-catcher.
Once completed, I attempt to return to the initial task but first I must search the garden for the tool I had downed.
I have tool bags and baskets, but these are no help to my memory and habit of putting a tool down as I head to see to another impatient plant.
Then I forked over the borders using a hand-fork to allow air to enter the soil and help it to dry out after the heavy rains, removing the fallen leaves as I worked,
As I planted the plants grown from cuttings taken in late summer I noticed – and killed – the chafer grub in several areas. I knew that this reprobate was around, for the mongooses are digging up the lawn to find these titbits.
On par with the chafer grub, when it comes to garden menaces, are the millions of ‘Ruellia tuberosa’ seedlings.
This enthusiastic plant is commonly called ‘popping seed’ and disperses its seed at will, each one indomitable to form a new plant. They take some weeding-out I can assure you.
All of this reinforces my notion that a garden is an indulgence of unremitting creation and rejuvenation. It is never concluded.
The above mentioned plants, tasks and grub feature in my books Tropical Trees and Shrubs of Bahrain and Exotic Perennials and Annuals for Pots and Gardens in Bahrain.
Elizabeth Shaheen – GDN – 28 Jan, ’07