Tag: clay soils

  • Spring Yellow: Conostylis candicans

    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…

  • Soft Feathery Grass: Baloskion tetraphyllum

    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…

  • Native Bees

    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…

  • Favourites for Shady Planting: Leionema ‘Green Screen’

    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…

  • Winter Reds

    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…

  • Black Stump

    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…

  • Rainforest planting

    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…

  • White flowering Grevillea ‘Ivory Whip’

    White flowering Grevillea ‘Ivory Whip’

    There is something pure and classic about white flowers, and I am one for a riot of colour most of the time, however I do think this white flowering Grevilleas is one of my favourites. It is a grafted specimen and one of the hardier species to withstand our humid east coast conditions.

  • Daisies make me happy

    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. 

  • Crazy Carpeting Grevillea ground-covers

    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?

  • Buttery Blueberry Bush Tucker: Austromyrtus dulcis

    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.

  • My favourite Acacia cognata dwarfs

    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…

  • Illawarra dwarf bleeding heart: Homolanthus stillingifolius

    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…

  • Lomandra as a fence screen

    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…

  • Green Bottlebrush: Callistemon pinifolius

    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…

  • The benefits of salt bush: Rhagodia spinescens

    The benefits of salt bush: Rhagodia spinescens

    There are several species of salt bush that I like to put in gardens, this one is one of my favourites  Rhagodia spinescens, it comes in varying shapes and forms, some a little more silver leaved some a little more compact. It is growing here as a pathway and garden edge and does a great job…

  • The double flowers of the Swamp Banksia: Banksia robur

    The double flowers of the Swamp Banksia: Banksia robur

    Whenever there is decent rain Banksia robur puts on a wonderful show of growing new leaves that emerge like the buds of red flowers, deep and furry. 

  • Soft Screening: Westringia ‘Snow Flurry’

    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!

  • Tree on fire: Stenocarpus sinuatus

    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.

  • Native ginger: Alpinia caerulea ‘Red Back’

    Native ginger: Alpinia caerulea ‘Red Back’

    This is native ginger, Alpinia caerulea ‘Red Back’, planted in an internal courtyard, doesn’t it look beautiful? It had been recently cleaned out and cut back as it was a bit too happy. It has naturally arching canes that form a vase like habit and can get a little burnt and ratty if left unaltered.