by Marcelle Mccallum

Created on: August 22, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

As renters, we always prided ourselves in adding or reinvigorating the gardens of the properties we lived in. One of them was a typical sprawling queenslander with a very large back yard. The central feature was of course a beautiful old mango tree accompanied by a frangipani. When we first arrived, there was a dirty, messy torelliana off to one side which the landlord thankfully removed. We used the big rings of the trunk to create a fairy ring under the mango with chamomile, soapwort, oregano and a few other groundcovers providing a lovely fragrant lawn around the ring.

We coaxed bronze fennel to life, which thrived despite our flatmate mowing it down. To this day, we have never understood how he managed to mow down a 2 foot high aromatic plant to an inch above the ground without noticing. To his credit, it was in a spot where the neighbours mint was littered through the grass, so perhaps he just thought it was mint he was smelling.

As this was earlier in the drought we found an old bath tub and grew water spinach and reeds and had a lovely little frog friendly pond. But by far the real gem to come out of this garden was a tiny little frangipani my partner noticed under the old frangipani tree. Amazingly, our frangipani had dropped a viable seed and even more stunningly, it had sprouted. This garden is in one of BrisVegas' older suburbs and there are many, many frangipani trees, all together making a cacophony of colours and varieties. The tree under which we found the precious seedling was a standard white, you know the type - brilliant white, with a bright yellow centre fading a little at the edge with that amazing, sock you in the face, sweet frangipani smell. In close proximity however, were a fruit salad, an amazing red, a striking pink, basically more colours than I can remember. We knew straight away we were in for a lucky dip! Who knows what colour the flowers would end up being.

Well, we lovingly rescued that little seedling and potted it up. We went on to cart it to another three rental houses after that, over about 4 years. We had two children, flatmates came and went, and always the little frangipani did nothing but grow up. Straight up, never deviating for a branch and never showing a flower. I began to worry that I was not treating it right in some way, though as afar as I knew, we had never treated it wrongly.

Finally when my son was 4 and the frangipani 6 I was at a gardening show and happened passed a frangipani sellers stall. On a whim, I paused

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