Thursday, February 01, 2007

An interesting (re)discovery


Today I came across some old sketches of my original ideas for the cretaceous garden. The first was perhaps a little ambitious, with a water feature and mini pier from the carport. However on the back of this sketch was an interesting hand written list-

suitable plants with cretaceous ancestors
  • ferns
  • moss
  • cycads
  • laurel (eg sassafras)
  • cypress (low growing)
  • deciduous beech
  • ginkgo
  • bamboo ??

The fact that I had included bamboo suggest that I had not researched this list well, if at all. Grasses, of which bamboo is one, didn't really evolve until until after the cretaceous (but more about bamboo later) I suspect it is on the list because it was already there in the garden.

I also has a second list of look-alike cretaceous plants
  • broad leaf cover (eg aspidistra)
  • pin cushion plant

Looking back that was a pretty good list to start, and matches what has flourished, I'm giving myself 7 out of 10 for plant selection (now is that a B minus or a C plus on a standardized marking system?)

My original design What it looks like today

My second design is much closer to what I have created it has a dry creek bed of rocks instead of a pond. I left out the stepping stone and have a mini island instead.

You might like to see what the area looked like before it became cretaceous.

No comments: