Photos Around the Farm

Photos Around the Farm

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I love to take photos.  I thought I'd share some of the ones I've taken lately around the farm  These first two are of an area that has been planted out in the last 12 months.  Although it looks a bit like a bunch of headstones in a graveyard, give it a couple of years and they'll be rows of productive large shrubs.  It's a very satisfying thought!  

We get a great view of Mt Wellington in the distance from this point in the plantation.

A couple of days ago I got my first ever photo (in focus, that is!!) of this wonderful Wattle Bird.  We have so many of them around the farm.  They have a very distinctive birdcall - not what you'd call pleasant, but distinctive.  And despite being quite large (maybe 40cm long) they are hard to catch on camera.  They love sitting in the Silver Tree (Leucadendron Argenteum).  They are called Wattle Birds after those dangly yellow "wattles" that hang below the eye, not as you would expect, because they like wattle!

A beautiful Silver Tree seed pod on a female tree.  

The Silver Tree

The Silver Tree

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At Swallows Nest Farm, we grow one of the most beautiful foliage plants of the proteaceae family.  It's commonly named the Silver Tree, but its actually a Leucadendron with the proper name of Leucadendron Argenteum.  (Just Latin for silver, really!)  It really does look spectacular at this time of year, and provides the most beautiful soft textured foliage with a silvery green colour that perfectly compliments the other proteas flowering at the same time.

The Silver Tree does actually grow to small tree proportions, but if it is picked regularly, like it is in the cut flower trade, it remains at a reachable height.  Some of our trees have been unpruned for a while and we were so excited to find that the female trees began to produce the most spectacular cones.  They begin as a soft silvery green, like the leaves, but look like they are made of metal.  When they dry, you end up with a beautifully structured cone, about the size of a tennis ball, on the end of a long stem.  They make a great statement in a vase, as a dried flower.

The bark of the Silver Tree is unusual too.  In their native South Africa, they were at one stage used as a firewood tree, because they grow quickly and burn well.  It's unusual wood - quite light, but the bark! I think it looks like elephant skin!

It's a remarkable tree, and we love growing it!