My neighbour phoned to say that her home made gnocchi with sage butter sauce was on the menu and to visit soon. “My sage always dies at this time of the year, and so it will not be on the menu for much longer!” she said. Like life itself, growing ones own food is fraught with all sorts of challenges and just as you think you have got it right something else crops up (or dies) to start the head and groin scratching all over again (have you ever noticed how many men resort to groin scratching when confronted with a problem that needs solving?)

When confronted with the sight of a dead row of your favourite vegetables that you have invested time, energy and money into, perhaps you should consider the TIPS FOR BUSY GARDENING LADIES from Kiss My Aster, www.kissmyaster.com, who suggests “If it dies get over it. It was not a good fit, you were not compatible. It was like a bad date that you should not repeat again, for any reason. If it does not like your soil, sun situation or conditions, that is NOT YOUR problem. Because you are a busy lady, and have other things to do like watch a Bette Davis movie or try on ALL the boots at the shoe shop. So if it dies celebrate! Good riddance, there are plants out there who ‘get you’, the plants you deserve.”

I have always found SAGE a tad tricky in the soil. Coming from the Mediterranean I would have thought it as easy to grow as thyme or rosemary but like my neighbours plant, they do have a horrible habit of suddenly choking when planted out in a bed. I have had better success with the plants that are grown in pots, but even then they will grow happily and then suddenly wilt off one day. Perhaps they need excellent drainage and our soils are a little heavy for them, although having said that I have seen them flourishing in heavy clay in deepest Scotland!

We thinking about companion planting we often think of plants that are planted amongst your veggies to chase away insects (such as marigolds) or to act as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ (such as planting nasturtiums which the aphids adore) However we tend to forget how important it is to attract bees to the veggie garden and orchard and below is a list of plants that I have found the bees love.

- Lavender, especially the English one with it thin flowers that are produced in great abundance. The Margaret Roberts variety is especially happy in Gauteng.

- Rosemary, allow a few of your bushes to flower and you will be amazed at the amount of bees you will attract to your garden.

- Marjoram/Oregano, by not picking the leaves and allowing the plants to produce their tiny white flowers, which the bees just love.

- Borage, bees and borage are very good friends and it is well worthwhile putting up with this thug of a plant for its useful flowers.

- Bulbine, I use the orange form of his neat succulent to ‘hedge’ my veggie beds as the bees love the flowers.

You only need to pick these flowers to see how beautifully they look in a vase and rather than going out and buying northern European Christmas style potted plants (such as poinsettias!) why not look at what your own garden has on offer. I am going to use a few quince branches (with some of the developing fruit on the branch) as the skeleton of the arrangement and augmenting them with a few Eucalyptus branches which have a few of their seed pods on, then some Agapanthus, using both buds and fully open flowers and then finally lots of rosemary and maybe an artichoke flowers for texture.

Having transplanted a medium sized almond tree last winter I am now busy shaping it and pruning out all the unwanted branches so that its shape resembles that of an open vase and through which a bird can easily fly without having to do a Red Arrow manoeuvre! It did flower but no nuts have started to develop and so I have planted some runner beans at its base and will allow them to scramble up into the lower branches of the tree. If life is busy with the usual end of year stuff and you do not have much time to plant anything at the moment at least try and fling some bean seeds in the ground before you rush off on your Christmas holidays, they will reward you with a crop in the second half of summer.

I also have a low hedge of the wonderful true jasmine, Jasminum officinale, in full flower at the moment and what a special plant this is. It a tough plant as it comes from Persia and these strongly scented flowers are used to make jasmine tea. The flowers have a smell that reminds me of visits to the shops in Grey Street in Durban or the Oriental Plaza is that it has much spicier scent than the more common varieties that are widely planted and known.

My favourite gardens are those that are simple and understated using simple and predominantly green plant material. I have always dreamt of doing a small urban garden using just jasmine. It is a useful family of plants and by cleverly selecting the varieties you can have a show of flowers and scent for most of the year.

Jasminum polyanthum for spring

Trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmine) for early summer

Jasminum officinale running up to mid summer

Jasminum multipartitum for the second half of summer

Jasminum angulare for late summer