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Portfolio: Glebe Native Garden Blitz!
OK blitz is not a word I would usually associate with my gardens, and its a rather over commercialised word, however it does portray something of the” makeover” aspect that a new garden can be.This is how I feel when I look at these before and after photos from a garden installed last Friday, total…
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Spring Yellow: Conostylis candicans
What better colour to welcome spring with than yellow! Goodbye winter! However it is feeling a little bit like we have headed straight into summer here on the NSW east coast, which I find a little bit frightening, it is looking like a confusing time for plants at the moment, anyway thats another topic altogether… This…
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Yellow, Cream and White Orchids: Dendrobium speciosum
It is a most fabulous season for the Dendrobium speciosums this year, there is no other word for it, they are putting on a massive show whenever I see them, and they seem to be everywhere all of a sudden, many of them in non native gardens which is always great to see.
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The Wonder of Wildflowers!
This is a little class/chat/presentation I am giving in September, with Wild Rumpus all about Illawarra’s wonderful wildflowers that are starting to flower now! I will be chatting about where you can see a good range of spring flowers around Wollongong, where the best bush walks are, what you might like to try growing yourself and…
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Favourites for Shady Planting: Leionema ‘Green Screen’
I collect a lot of favourites for shady planting, it has become somewhat of a hobby to find natives that will grow in difficult shady spots. Dry shade, moist shade, windy shade, winter shade and summer sun…..screening for shade, you get the picture. So this is one of my new discoveries, Leionema ‘Green Screen’ I…
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Winter Reds
I have been away a little bit lately, well more away from my garden than anywhere else. So I haven’t been noticing all the details, just madly rushing about planting, watering and spending more time in other peoples gardens than my own. So when I returned home on the weekend I was greeted by the…
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Black Stump
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…
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Rainforest planting
With the excessive amount of rain we have been receiving over the last few days and with more scheduled to come I am noticing how the different sections of my garden are coping. Over half of my garden is in heavy shade and of that half again is planted out with rainforest and local shade…
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Enticing Suburban Native Garden
This is David’s wonderful garden, it has been made with a passionate eye and a dedicated hand and is simply beautiful. The garden is well laid out and incorporates several different areas that are all planted out with natives, can you believe it is only five years old?
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Daisies make me happy
I went to the Blue Mountains over the long weekend and not only at Mt Tomah gardens, but also on the property I was staying, the paper daisies were popping up their sunny heads.
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Buttery Blueberry Bush Tucker: Austromyrtus dulcis
Buttery Blueberries is what I think the flavour of the Midyim Berry is, by far the most delicious of the bush tucker I have tried, and also one of the easiest to grow! I have half a dozen plants in my garden and although they are small they are surprisingly productive.
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My favourite Acacia cognata dwarfs
I used to be completely devoted to Acacia ‘Mini Cog’, one of the many dwarf shrub forms of Acacia cognata or the River Wattle. This image is of ‘Green Mist’ weeping over the edge of a large stone retaining wall, I couldn’t think of a better use for it. Acacia cognata has very narrow long lime…
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Illawarra dwarf bleeding heart: Homolanthus stillingifolius
This is Homolanthus stillingifolius or dwarf bleeding heart, a reasonably rare shrub growing in the Illawarra area. I was given this as a seedling from a neighbour who was a bush carer and collected the seed. Its leaves look like miniatures of the regular bleeding heart, they are delicate and light up easily in the…
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Portfolio: Engadine Garden Design
I designed this garden in Sydney’s southern suburbs in the spring of 2010, it was built and planted shortly after and has flourished. Every time I visit I am amazed at how quickly the plants are becoming established. I love the garden, it is exactly what I wanted, I am so happy with it …
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Lomandra as a fence screen
When I planted these Lomandra hystrix I had no idea that they would work so well to cover the 1.8m high fence, now when I look at this area I realise how perfect they are.It is a difficult spot, fairly shady and not a great deal of soil but these Lomandras have filled out nicely…
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Westringia spheres
This is a rather striking entrance garden planted in front of a picket fence, right next to the footpath. There is a row of Westringia spheres followed by the contrasting soft weeping habit of Leptospermum ‘Pink Cascade’, it works so well. It give the more private garden behind the fence a sense of intrigue and…
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Groundcover grass: Themeda ‘Mingo’
I am slowly discovering all the different forms of Kangaroo grass, trust me there are more than you think! This is a blue form which is so weeping it is basically like a ground cover. Native ornamental grasses can fulfil so many rolls in the garden, they can be borders, edging, provide habitat, food for…
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Green Bottlebrush: Callistemon pinifolius
I know many people don’t like bottlebrush and consider them totally out of fashion and scraggly, but for me they are so useful within a garden design. This is Callistemon pinifolius, and it is a special in my eyes for the amazing flower colour, which is a subtle lime green (most of the time, sometimes…
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Low growing shrub: Correa ‘Dusky Bells’
There are not too many low growing shrubs that look lush and green, yet grow in dry shade and flower their heads off regardless the weather, these are the reasons for loving Correas especially this one Correa ‘Dusky Bells’.
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Frogs, ponds and native water plants: Nymphoides crenata
So this is one of our little friends that likes to visit our pond. Pond is probably too grand a name for it really, it is just an old bath set into the ground where I can grow Australian native water plants, with varying degrees of success.
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Soft Screening: Westringia ‘Snow Flurry’
This is Westringia ‘Snow Flurry’ or pretty close to Westringia longifolia, it is the most useful plant to put in a garden. It will grow almost anywhere, including in a reasonable amount of shade!
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Tree on fire: Stenocarpus sinuatus
The Firewheel trees are flowering their heads off this year, I’m not sure what it is, maybe the searing heat? maybe the deluge of rains, whatever, my tree has never had so many flowers on it and its not the only one.
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Indigenous Eclectic Garden
This is a very, very special garden that I visited last year, from the moment I walked in, the space spoke to me. It is private and secluded and quite small, but jam packed with Illawarra indigenous species.
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Grass tree spheres
Xanthorrhoea species or Grass Trees are a pretty standard ‘feature plant’ in a native garden, with their showy black trunk and perfect grass head on top they are almost a signature plant for a lot of Australian gardens.
Category: Shade tolerant