This is a native garden I visited when it was open in April 2012, it shows you what can be done when someone with a lot of drive and passion finds a blank canvas. It truly amazes me that so many beautiful garden are created by one or two people. Black Stump Natives is located on the outskirts of Sydney in Camden, it has been a 20 year project for Tony Sexton and is still being tweaked, as are all good gardens!The thing that I loved about this garden was how much personality it had, there were things to look at everywhere, from interesting logs and sculptured wood, to well built up sandstone feature beds and water features. I also really loved the layout of the garden. It was like a discovery trail, and I spent a lot of time down the back of the garden where it backs onto the creek covered with a Casuarina forest.

Tony has an excellent eye for colour and texture contrast which can be seen everywhere you look, this is one of my particular favourites, a tunnel leading you to the rear of the garden made with Acacia fimbriata and Eleocarpus reticulatus. The garden has many intriguing pathways and hidden corners which feel as if they have been made for children, down the back there was a lovely sandpit area, and up top a super size trampoline.
This shot is purely because of the layered Banksias, they are all so thick, healthy and bushy, planted together to make a screening or hedge. There is a Banksia robur in the background, then Banksia spinulosa and Banksia ‘Giant Candles’ on the front left.

The feature beds are filled with grafted standards, many Grevilleas and bordered with low growing, flowering shrubs. Here too you can see a wonderful examples of layering to set off the different colours and shapes of the shrubs. There is also a deceased Eucalypt in the background that plays a pivotal role in the garden by adding dramatic affect.

Here is a great combination of Xanthorrhoea with dried flower spikes and Eremophila glabra prostrate. On the right is a Grevillea  rhyolitica standard and a stunning Grevillea petrophiloides (brilliant  show off plant!) with the pink flower spikes. AND the garden bed is full of tree stumps and rock work, a feature in itself.

Last but not least I was VERY taken with this wattle, it is Acacia conferta and was growing and flowering so happily in a heavy shaded position underneath a large Eucalyptus. I would say the drainage might also have been not very crash hot but there it was filling such a difficult spot and still putting on a show.