Not long ago, Toowoomba gardener Val Peachey was collecting gray water from her washing machine to keep her flowers alive during the drought.
This year the watering can has been turned into an ornament, hanging on the back fence.
“We’ve had a winter like the winters of old: cold and foggy,” Mrs Peachey explained.
Toowoomba celebrates its annual flower carnival in mid-September, but gardeners have been busy over the winter months preparing the soil, planting seedlings and fertilising, to ensure the plants are at their colorful peak in the spring.
“The cold weather has caused some plant development to be delayed a bit,” Ms Peachey said.
“The foxgloves aren’t blooming yet, and they’re usually blooming now.
“Some of my self-seeding plants didn’t come up this year, and I put it down to wet and cold.”
But she is looking on the bright side. Literally.
“With the cooler weather we’ve had, the flowers are looking more vibrant this year,” she said.
“Heat ‘blanches’ flowers and burns them.”
Third-time grand champion winner Bob Ford said he counted “six or seven” frosts in a row this year, which was “a lot when you’re trying to grow young seedlings,” he said.
After buying more than 1,500 seedlings for this year’s garden show, he said he was happy to save money on water and pesticides, as the cooler weather had kept insects to a minimum.
“Hot days bring moisture, and that creates a bit of fungus on the seedlings, but this year has been disease-free because it’s been so cold.”
“People might complain a bit about being cold, but we just roll,” said the champion gardener.
Across town at Jill and Rod Osborne’s Highfields home, the extra water has provided an additional challenge in the form of an unplanned water “feature” next to its reservoir.
“I’ve only been able to mow once since January, and I almost washed the mower that day because it was so wet,” he explained.
Osborne said the groundwater tables were so full that water had seeped through a neighboring reservoir.
“Our block is built on mud and it’s the first time we’ve seen anything like this,” he explained.
Osborne’s display garden was designed to conserve water during dry periods. This year, they have lost a number of established trees due to excess water.
Ms Osborne said she planted her annuals in the mud this year, another first.
“I raked the beds to give extra drainage, and even added potting mix to the soil, and that worked for a while,” she said.
Gardeners and farmers face another La Niña
The Bureau of Meteorology officially declared a third consecutive La Niña summer, which increases the risk of rain and flooding in the coming months.
“The Darling Downs is perhaps a bit like the coast and [Queensland’s] Burnett, where that water table has just really come up with all the rain we’ve had at the end of the last growing season,” explained Chelsea Jarvis, researcher at the University of Southern Queensland’s Center for Applied Climate Science.
“We’re going into spring with fairly wet soils, which is good for some. But if we start getting a lot of spring rain, it can become a messy, muddy problem very quickly,” Dr Jarvis said.
But there are still unknowns.
“No two La Niñas are the same, each one affects us differently,” Dr Jarvis said.
“We live in a very variable climate. And that means we’re going to have droughts again and we’re going to have floods again.”
In the garden, Val Peachey is keeping busy, even if she doesn’t have to touch the watering can.
“There’s been a lot more weeds this year,” she laughed.
“But we never complain about the rain, it’s better to have rain than drought. We just have to work with the seasons.”
