Bush planting in September in Chiang Mai is usually not recommended.  For best growth and survival in the dry seasons plant early once the rains have come and brought moisture to soften the soil. However this year as well as some very early May planting – impossible in 2010 when even in the first week of June the ground was rock hard – we have tried a small planting of mainly understorey plants.

Click on these pics and zoom in to see the detail.

Here Nancy, a new International Citizen of Chiang Mai, poses with her first plant and a heavy iron crow bar.  Even though the soil was moist we still needed the help of Ian and the crow bar to dig through the tough layer of fill that covers most of the land in the park.

We have yet to identify Nancy’s plant although we know it is a member of the pea family. The picture on the right shows one in flower at Huey Teng Tao beside the prickly Mimosa invisa, a weed we always need to keep under control.

The planting area was under big exotic Rain Trees many of which are dying and in time will be replaced by the indigenous trees we have planted. We hope that the shade will help bring the new plants through the coming hot season.

We also planted a number of Clerodendrum viscosum plants given by Eric Danell of Dokmai Garden.  We dug these out of a lawn and grew them in bags for a month before planting out.

This photo was taken at the height of the hot dry season of March 2010 so the leaves are showing a thirty look. Come May they sport black fruit about 5 mm across backed by red star sepals to put on a bright show in the bush.

PLEASE do come back to see some more interesting People pictures when they arrive.

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