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Horizontal Contrast: Homoranthus flavescens
Homoranthus flavescens is a striking plant, the foliage appears succulent and conifer like and the branches grow almost horizontally and appear to layer on top of each other, plus it has a beautiful grey green leaf, making it a wonderful feature shrub in a planting.
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Wonderful Street Trees: Backhousia citriodora
I was driving through Huntershill and onto Ryde yesterday and I was overjoyed to see the most wonderful sight, rows upon rows of Lemon Myrtle in full bloom, planted out in the streets. Finally! a council using its head when it comes to street trees! I know it is not the only one, I have…
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Portfolio: Consult Figtree
I have been busy this week planting out a consult design in Wollongong, it has been very satisfying cleaning up an aged garden, digging up weeds and tree roots and planting fresh natives. The bones of the garden were already there, pathways, existing large trees and a brand new renovation and deck, what was needed…
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Bush Tucker Under-Dog: Dianella caerulea
This season is the first time I have had a decent flush of fruit on my Dianella caerulea and I have been pleasantly surprised by the taste, although it doesn’t hit the same spot as the midyim berry, it is actually tasty enough for me to pick and munch on whilst in the garden.
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Casuarina Groundcovers: Casuarina glauca prostrate
I adore Casuarinas, in all shapes and forms, so I’m pretty happy with the number of ground cover Casuarinas that are around at the moment. They are tough, quick growing and have a lovely weeping soft look about them, they also can grow to form interesting shapes and textures in the garden. By the way…
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Red and White: Angophora hispida
Reds and whites are out at the moment on two native trees, this photo is of the dwarf Angophora, Angophora hispida. This is a beautiful small tree that buds up in furry red clusters for a month before the cream flowers come out, I love the rusty reds this tree produces and even better when…
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Shady Lilly Pilly: Syzygium wilsonii
There are so many Lilly Pillys around, different cultivars, that apparently grow faster, thicker, thinner, redder and so on, they are used for hedging everywhere (which is great, far better than Murraya) and can be a little over done. This one is Syzygium wilsonii and it is amazing for a few reasons, firstly it has…
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Plum Bush Tucker: Davidsonia pruiens
This is the Davidsons Plum (Davidsonia pruiens) sending out its flower spikes, getting ready to cover itself in juicy, tart plums YUM. I saw this one in a clients rainforest garden and it was very striking, each of those like pinky and yellow flowers will turn into one of the most famous bushtucker fruits. However…
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Easy to grow WA species: Melaleuca incana
I would so love to have a garden in Western Australia, all the interesting natives I could grow Eucalyptus macrocarpa, Banksia coccinea, Macropedia fulignosa….ahhh but we always want what we can’t have…. So I continue to trail things in my heavy clay, coastal garden with our east coast humid summer and some WA species will grow…
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Delicate Tea Trees: Leptospermum ‘Cardwell’
I love tea trees or Leptospermums, I’m not sure what it is about them that appeals to me so much. Perhaps their soft weeping foliage or the way they can get absolutely covered in flowers so much so that you can hardly see their leaves from a distance. And the flowers are showy, individually they…
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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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Soft Feathery Grass: Baloskion tetraphyllum
I tend to use a lot of grasses in my gardens, I am not totally reliant on them and can manage without, however I mostly use plants with a weeping, soft appearance, and grasses are valuable in creating texture and contrast in a garden. This is Baloskion tetraphyllum, one of my favourites for its vibrant…
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Native Bees
All winter long, on warm sunny days I have been able to step into my garden and hear the low humming from the bees in my Eucalypts, at times the noise has been breath takingingly loud. It has been a wonderful reminder on another one of the roles that the indigenous trees on my block…
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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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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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Crazy Carpeting Grevillea ground-covers
OK so these two Grevilleas are a bit famous for going wild in the best way possible of course! They are fast growing and will cover a really large area, plus they are hardy and flower a lot. What more could you ask for?
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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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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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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…
Tag: clay soils