A Garden in Waiting… No Longer                                        A New Malaysian Garden 

The new Colinas Garden is, at last, taking shape.

It is with some regret that I have not posted earlier and more often about progress in establishing the new home and its sustainable garden on our small acreage. The past months, however, have been a busy time. From this point, however, I hope to be more reliable in documenting the transformation of our ‘blank canvas’, the New Colinas, into a sustainable and productive gardening space, which allows for the welfare of our local native wildlife.

A female Bower Bird is a regular visitor to our bird bath... and also a thief of our cherry tomatoes and strawberries.

As I indicated in the post ‘A Garden in Waiting’, we left Sydney behind in March 2018. For a period of about 15 months, we resided in a rental home in a major city on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, carefully tending our potted garden of cuttings and seedlings, most of which had been transported from Sydney.

The construction of the New Colinas home was completed in July 2019. So, we have just begun to settle after six months of unpacking… and planting, of course. Now, I don’t want to bore you with the details of the unpacking, so let’s talk about the gardens…

From July onwards, our first area to be planted effectively was the Citrus Orchard. This included young grafted plants of various orange, mandarin, lime and pomelo varieties, among which was a Marcott of the pomelo tree which we had successfully grown in the Western Sydney garden. Between these young trees, we have planted our first Ginger and Lemon Grass and Pea Eggplants. There might not be enough of these for a harvest this season. However, we planned for a long delay from removal to first harvest by freezing a large quantity of ginger and lemon grass, collected from the Sydney property.

Above and below... Two trees waiting impatiently to be planted: a Wax Jambu, purchased at a local market; and a Nam Dok Mai mango

The Nam Dok Mai was purchased online from Daley's at Kyogle, NSW

Our first successful mango planting took place in September. This beautiful tree had spent six years in a large terracotta pot, and just this week flushed its first new growth of the season. It is a seedling tree of the delicious Kent variety. Unfortunately, it will not produce fruit true-to-type, Kent being a mono-embryonic mango variety. Nevertheless, it will produce acceptable and interesting fruit… I am never afraid of attempting to grow seedling fruit trees.

The long-suffering Kent seedling mango finally makes it into the ground

Aside from the new orchard, we have begun to establish Vegetable and Herb Gardens. These are already providing us with plenty of green vegetables, such as lettuces, chicory, beans and Kangkung, Sweet Potato leaves as well as chillies and capsicums, okra, eggplants and tomatoes, along with a plentiful variety of herbs. 

Our first Herb and Veggie Garden of lettuces, basils, beans, chicory, kangkung, shallots and Mints

Other areas of the garden which are in their infancy, are an attractive Front Garden of low-growing flowering plants and an Asian Senses Garden.

The front garden lines our north-facing veranda

It has been a long wait to rebuild the Colinas Garden in its new location, but this has not been without its trials and tribulations… But, we will discuss those in the next post!

Many plants, fruiting and ornamental, await their turn for planting 

Wishing you hours of enjoyment and contentment in your garden…