6 min readAug 13, 2026 05:42 PM IST First published on: Aug 13, 2026 at 05:41 PM ISTI never was a hardnosed gardening type and usually let the garden do its own thing – with a little help from the gardener, of course. And I only recently realised that each of the eight species of trees growing in my small plot had its own story to tell, stories we need to listen to.The eldest was the Australian bottlebrush my mother planted over 40 years ago. It got a bad start to life when a drunken twerp in a Contessa slammed into it, hunching it over at a dangerous angle. It looked like it would keel over any moment, especially when the rain made its foliage heavy. At one point, we had to amputate a branch so it could ‘straighten up’ a bit. For years, maybe still in shock, it never flowered. Then, one year, there were scarlet blooms peeping out, just a few at first. But in subsequent years, it burst into full bloom: thousands of fuzzy scarlet flowers, wafting their scent and attracting bees, wasps, birds, squirrels and monkeys in hordes. The party lasted around a fortnight, from the first week of March after which the massive clean-up that had to be done.