An Aussie Garden In Japan Is Bloomin’ Hard Work

After months of pretty much neglect, it was time to get back into the garden with the gifts of a long weekend and the presence of Mrs. Kangaeroo. I’m pretty sure our little haven will end up appreciating us for doing so.

Summer ravaged our lawn for the third consecutive year. I’d planned on re-laying the grass using a Japanese seed in the spring, but as it was flourishing then, I decided to try using the North American grasses one more time but cutting higher. I shouldn’t have bothered. But August, the grass had nearly all died and we had a dustbowl.

This year was also a great one to be a bug on our property. Bugs ate to their hearts’ content, wiping out the proteas, which had showed signs of flowering, and probably the sisal, which had until then thrived.

We’ve got a grevillea flowering at the moment, confirming again that our tree has been the star of the garden, producing hundreds of floral delights down the years.

When I saw it today, I thought it had been a pretty lousy year for flowers in our garden. But a bit of closer consideration revealed it wasn’t.

We had the hardenbergia, both types of grevillea, the wattles, callistemon, myrtle, snow in the summer and almost the little prince protea. None of the banksia flowered, though the two trees grown from seed thrived even though being in close proximity to the beetle larvae “bugocalypse,” nor did the jacaranda, which we had gone to extreme lengths to try to induce its lovely purple flowers, ultimately to no avail. And let’s not forget the kangaroo paw.

This year probably wasn’t as successful for blooms as 2024, when I received messages from friends that their’s had flowered, but it was a good year for us.

I’ve re-potted loads of kangaroo paw over the past couple of days, and even planted some into the ground because we didn’t have enough soil. I’ll transplant more next weekend with some soil now on the way. Space is gonna be an issue again, though. I’ve already packed the front of our house outside of the garden fence, which I am not really supposed to do.

I could tell a lot of our kangaroo paw were getting crowded in their pots over the summer, but it was too hot to re-plant them, so I had to wait. We had to take Dino to the hospital all the time anyway, so I just had to hope that their rapid growth wouldn’t seem them stifle in the pot.

Yesterday finally provided a chance to re-pot some of the more crowded kangaroo paw. I went to the local home center and picked up some soil blended especially for native Australian plants. I grabbed two of its three remaining bags, but was sorry to see that it’s once impressive Australian plant section has gone. I suspect the soil dedicated to these plants won’t be selling there much longer, either. The similarly bespoke fertilizer is already off the shelves.

That fertilizer sums up one of the difficulties of maintaining an Aussie garden in Japan. It has little phosphorus, which the Aussie natives tend to dislike, but is a crucial component of most fertilizers. It’s a similar story with insecticides, many of which also have lofty levels of phosphorus, which wipes out the little buggers pretty quickly, but will do the same to the Aussie plants. That’s why we had to just watch, wait and hope while the beetles had their banquet.

Tree height is posing another problem. Our trees are exceeding the permissible tree line and need to be cut. Against my better judgement, Mrs. Kangaeroo called in some arborists in September and they pruned the jacaranda and silver wattle, both have which have now bounced back with great exuberance.

I’ll wait until the last holiday of the month (we get three extra days off in November!). I will have to prune a lot of the trees after that. But first I need to learn how to do it properly.