Foliage Follow Up: my rosemary hedge

I’m a bit late, but I did want to show off my 25 rosemary plants (on the left, below), which grew from cuttings that I took from a single big old plant that was in the garden when we arrived here.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: rosemary(Especially since the gardener expressed grave doubts at the time that they would root and grow.)

The photo above shows the passage between the vegetable garden on the left and the cutting garden on the right, walking toward the south end of the upper lawn.

By the way, that huge, dark green tree in the upper left corner is what your potted weeping fig would look like over time — in the ground, in a constantly warm climate.

I started the cuttings about 18 months ago.*  Now the plants are 2′ to 3′ tall,

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: rosemaryexcept at the very end, on the left above.  Those plants — which will finish out the row — are about 6 months old.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: rosemaryAbove, on the left, is the mother plant.  Just to the right of it is a little patch of alpine strawberries, which I grew from a packet of seeds.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: alpine strawberriesI divided them recently, so they look a bit skimpy.  The tiny fruit does have a more pronounced and almost perfume-y taste, compared with larger strawberries.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: black-eyed susan seedlingAs I am giving you  a couple of my success stories, I should also show you the flip side — above.

This is the one Rudbeckia hirta or black-eyed Susan to germinate out of an entire packet of seeds — a plant that has a reputation for generous self-seeding.  I have big hopes for it, though.  It’s a pretty showy native American plant.

Thanks to Pam at Digging, who hosts Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up on the 16th of every month. Click  here and see what’s happening in other gardens.


*I cut pieces that were a little or not quite woody, stripped the ends of leaves, and stuck them in a slightly sunken, slightly shaded place.  Then, I kept the ground there damp for a few months.  After I transplanted them, I was also careful to water the new plants almost daily for a few weeks.

Quiet corners in foreign lands

Each time we’ve travelled to the north of Rwanda, we’ve passed the small Chinese cemetery in the Rulindo District. Last month, we stopped for a few minutes.

The cemetery is located just off the road to Muzanze, about 50 minutes from Kigali. It holds the remains of 10 Chinese citizens who died in Rwanda during the 1980s and 1990s, while they were working on development projects of road construction or health services.

The graves are in a row near the top of a hill, with a set of stairs leading up to each one.

The material elements are now-weathered concrete, grass, and agaves.

The arrangement is simple, the effect poignant.

The cemetery is cared for, and the Chinese community, led by Ambassador Shll Zhan, held a ceremony there for the Qingming Festival on April 5 of this year.

When I looked at these pictures, I remembered two photos I had taken in 2007 of another small, touching cemetery garden. It holds the graves of eighteen Algerian retainers who had followed their Emir into imprisonment in France in 1848.

Abd al-Qadir and his household were held in the Château d’Amboise in the Loire Valley. Those who died before he was released in 1852 were buried there.

The memorial garden on the grounds of the château is beautiful. It was built in 2002, according to one source, but I have been unable to find out any more about it.

The square markers are set in a rectangle planted with low mounding plants. A hedge of rosemary diagonally intersects the space.