Ventnor Botanical Gardens - frost damage

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This is a blog to follow on from the one I posted on 26th December – Boxing Day, Winter Warmer………………………….
After walking along the coast between Brook and Compton Bay we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens. I got my membership through on Friday which was great, I will be doing my stint at volunteering on a Wednesday.
The main reason for my visit today was to look at the potential damage dome by the recent frosts and chilly weather, this is not something the Island is used to.
I took nearly 200 photos today, some of the bad casualties, but some of the plants that managed to make it through the weather with great gusto.
Now this has to be in my top 5 plants – a shrub/tree depending on where you grow it, not as fast growing as some of the other varieties, it is Acacia Baileyana Purpurea. It is in full flower with the bright yellow pin-head blooms contrasting beautifully with purply blue foliage



I have 3 of these to put in my back garden when I have done the landscaping.

The next shrub we came across was a spindly, pine round shrub that smelled like a citrus pine. I couldn’t find a label so if anyone can help that would be fantastic


And then I came across this little beauty, the label near it said ‘Freylinia Lancelota’ from the family of plants known as Scrophulariaceae.



Then came some devastation – My husband called me ‘Death goes on Holiday’. If any of you have seen Gary Larson’s DVD/Video of The Far Side then it is on there, very funny
The first sorry looking specimen is Geranium Maderense


These Echium pininana are looking a bit sad as well, but there are plenty more around the gardens that are looking ok.

Like these, they seem to be planted in a spot that suits them better

The Isoplexis are ok? They certainly don’t look as bright as they did in my blog of December 26th, but they have faired better than some of my plants of that blog


The next plant looked fine on Boxing Day

But has really suffered these last few weeks


The next set of sorry looking specimens were the Aeoniums, the large ones at the front of the display have frozen through and drooped, but the ones on the hot rocks seem to have faired pretty well



There is some good news, a tree which wasn’t supposed to survive this was the Norfolk Island Pine – Araucaria heterophylla, but here it is after the awful cold spell with no damage at all


This banana hasn’t faired too well, ours neither, but it is a shame because it had some banana fruit growing on it which is now black :(


These are other plants which I love, they are so structural and prehistoric looking, I have one which is about 1 inch high in the greenhouse!



These Zantedeschias aethiopica looked perky a few weeks ago, but have flopped and are looking a little less appealing

But, I’m holding out hope for the new shoots appearing in the middle of the plants

Next are these salvias, this particular variety ‘confertiflora’ is usually grown as an annual in this country, but i think is does pretty well here usually, the flowers and foliage has frost burn and has turned brown and crusty

Actually this flower doesn’t look that bad!!

And then there was hope for the show of flowers for the Summer, the magnolia grandiflora budding

The happy feeling didn’t last for long i’m afraid, remember the Sparmannia Africana, it was looking gorgeous a couple of weeks ago


This is what it looks like now, what a shame. This is usually grown as a conservatory plant in the UK so I’m not really surprised it has suffered


It was still pretty cold today, but it was about 9 degrees so it was still bizarre that the pond was still frozen solid around the edges. There are usually Koi carp in there, so it was good news that the moving water provided by the fountain in the centre kept a gap in the ice



This was an interesting little plant, on first glimpses it looked like a type of Mimosa, but not so, there were lovely flowers hanging on the ends of the branches, one was a red, I guess Rubra and the other white Alba and the plant was ‘Sollya heterophylla’ a genus of the family Pittosporacaea.


This was a new Brugmansia shoot taken on the 26th December,

But it has been flattened by the frost. Fortunately these plants can be pretty resillient to frost, they will lose all of the top growth but will shoot again from the bottom

Now this was a surprise, I went searching for this because I had seen it on boxing day and I thought it may have been killed by the frost, but nature has again surprised me, this King Protea has a huge bud on it, I think this one will flower this year


But another casualty in the African Garden collection was the Osteospernum, this lines the walk way with huge purple daisy flowers, but it has been hit really hard, not unlike my orange ones


Fascicularia bicolour, still looking ok, mind you it is really sheltered in this spot, all the Agaves and cactus planted here look perfectly ok

Cactus

Agaves


Now this is something you would need a lot of room for in the garden, it has an amazing umbrella canopy, not in leaf at present but I can’t wait to see it in the Spring. The amount of time you visit somewhere and totally miss something – even something as big as this lol! It is Zelkova Serrata (Japan)


After the many photos I took of the cactus collection o the 26th December I had to go and look at the beds now. These will really suffer when you get frost, but all in all the damage was minimal, a few of the new flower spikes on the Aloes had frosted and bent over turning to mush but there were others which were doing ok



I wasn’t too concerned about the damage, but the Sparmannia Africanas and Osteospernums formed a vital part of the Africanus garden so I’m not too sure what will happen with those. Simon Goodenough who is the curator at the gardens will I’m sure have the answer. I am going to go there as my first visit as a member on Wednesday so I’ll ask a few questions and see if the staff are concerned about the damage or not.

• 11 Jan, 2009
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