Turksvye
The prickly pear maze is one of the most photographed features of the garden. Strikingly simple, the cactus plants stand like sculptures between stones.
Planted as single leaves just over 2 years ago, the prickly pears (or turksvye) have grown above head height, and are now producing their first exotic flowers, followed by delicious fruits. We have six different selections, each ripening with fruit varying in colour from white, yellow, red to purple.
The outer skins of the succulent fruits are covered in fine, almost invisible thorns. When ripe, we carefully cut and peel the fruit, careful not to touch them with bare hands, and serve slices of the sweet flesh in Babel’s seasonal red salad.
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Wild Birds
We inherited a 150 year old weeping mulberry tree with our garden, and when planning the layout, we decided to establish as central to an area designed to attract wild birds. The birds find the mulberry tree’s gnarled old branches and succulent young fruit an irresistible combination, and to further encourage our little feathered friends, we sowed some seed-bearing plants nearby.
Black oil sunflower seeds are considered best at attracting a wide variety of seed-eating birds. Jerusalem artichoke, with its edible rhizomes, is from the same family and it is now displaying an abundance of yellow flowers with a chocolatey fragrance.
Oh, and if you have some time to spare and want to do some bird-spotting, you’re very welcome to do so from the human-sized nest (designed and made by Porky Hefer of Animal Farm) we’ve hidden in the bamboo.
Constance-Marie
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Garden harvest
Who ever said that vegetables couldn’t be as beautiful as a flower arrangement? We love these harvest arrangements from our garden by Constance.
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VISI #59
The March issue of VISI magazine sports a beautiful photograph of our new conservatory, with a lushly illustrated story inside, giving insight into the concept behind our glass house, and our plans for making it an important part of Babylonstoren. Read the full story here.
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Meet Sugar Baby
Remember the watermelon experiment we blogged about in January? Well, our experiment has borne fruit! Meet Sugar Baby – the watermelon we planted on 15 October 2011, and picked on Monday.
In between the planting and the picking, we placed Sugar Baby in a Perspex box with a “B” debossed on the inside, and then on Monday, when we saw Sugar Baby starting to break through the box, we knew it was time to harvest. We love our square watermelon!
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