Daily Life

Paws for Effect

A kangaroo paw from Kangaeroo Corner (in May 2022)

Blessed by warm, sunny weather and the sight of spring blossoms, I boldly decided to divide our kangaroo paws to try and get better flowers to make Kangaeroo Corner look even more effective.

Getting gear ready to pot and transplant

I’ve grown these kangaroo paw from seed that I brought back from Australia when I visited in September 2002.

Nearly all these plants were grown from seeds brought back from Australia in September 2022

I didn’t think I’d be able to grow them, having never even conceived of the idea before getting a garden in 2022, but decided to give it a try anyway.

The most sikly-looking kangaroo paw of our patch

I brought back dozens of varieties of seed, but the only ones I really, desperately wanted to succeed were the kangaroo paw, given the name and theme of the site and the garden.

Kangaroo paw

And that’s pretty much exactly what I got, though there were a few delightful bonuses chucked in, too.

The kangaroo paw actually thrived, and I’ve been able to give away many to friends and neighbors.

Kangaroo paw

And, having shown their hardiness by getting through the winter, I noticed that many of the kangaroo paw were good enough to split and grow even more plants.

Kangaroo paw can easily be propagated, apparently, as they have rhizomes…or so the various gardening videos on YouTube tell me.

Kangaroo paw

So I took the most seemingly sickly, unsightly plant I had, dug it up and split the roots into six different pots.

Almost a day later, the two runts already seem to have failed, but it’s too early to quit yet.

Kangaroo paw

And riding on the wave of over-confidence, I removed all the cuttings I’d put in a huge pot and replaced them with a kangaroo paw in the hope that the extra room would give it extra impetus to thrive.

Kangaroo paw transplanted to a huge pot to give it room to grow and hopefully thrive

All in all, it was a weekend of many experiments. It will be interesting to see how they pan out.