Leucopspermum flower

This flower was supposed to be set against a blue sky, but the clouds advanced while I cleaned the mud off my hands from weeding and grabbed my camera.

We grow a number of South African plants from the Protea family in our garden, under as natural conditions as possible. They grow in infertile soils in their native habitat so we mulch them only with their own trimmings. The climate in the southern Cape is somewhat similar to ours, with lots of wind, cool, wet winters, and almost no frost. So generally these plants do well here.

Because we have a large garden, we tried to plant it in areas representing parts of the world with a similar Mediterranean style of climate. The bottom third is planted in local New Zealand natives, and then we have Australian, Californian and South African sections, as well as a small area of true European Mediterranean plants.