Strategic Gardening (And Garden Visiting)

To add to our collection of garden-related visits, we took ZooGranny, and cousins and friends along with us to the Margaret Roberts Herbal Centre. The kids and I had paid a visit in late winter, and vowed we'd come back in the spring. Even in winter it was beautiful, and we knew we'd be in for a treat come the warmer weather.
Margaret Roberts is a pioneer in South-African companion planting. Her gardens are essentially potagers, mixing fruit and vegetables with herbs, flowers and traditional South African medicinal plants, to the most beautiful effect. What's wonderful is that she uses the natural properties of the plants she chooses in order to grow everything completely organically. Plants susceptible to aphids, for example, are grown next to plants that act as natural aphid traps.
When planning our veggie patch for our new garden, we referred a lot to her book on companion planting, and a visit to her garden to see it all "in the flesh" inspired us enough to get through all the hard work of clearing, digging, hard-landscaping. Only the day before this visit we sowed the last of the seeds into our patch.
Our second visit, thus, was a bit of a celebration of work achieved, as well as a hope-inducing promise of what ours may look like in a little while.

In the tea-room: a foretaste (pardon the pun) of what the gardens are like. Have you ever seen such a beautiful salad?

My boys decorating one of the fountains. The gardens are laid out in a style that reminds me of formal  Italian gardens.

MissyGeorge amongst petunias, starflowers, borage, lemon trees and anise.

Cousins, friends and the Zoo

MissyGeorge tries out the gongs. What a beautiful sound and - I was impressed - they were (almost) tuned

SirBiggs leaves his mark in the gravel garden

With little friends and trees to climb, who could be sad?

Good friends, big and small - and behind them the riot of colour that is the garden.

At the end of a long day: MrTepps falls asleep on LadyLolo's shoulder on the drive home. That's a heavenly smelling Lemon Verbena, bought at the nursery for our little patch, behind them.