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Photo Competition Entries and Winner!
Our photo competition is finished and we’ve been absolutely blown away by all our entries. The submissions represent so many different birds and locations across Australia that we couldn’t resist putting them all in one blog post with the winner! Thank you to everyone who sent photos in to us – they have been the…
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Portfolio: Woolooware Garden Design
This residential garden was designed at the beginning of 2017 and built later that year, to complete the property’s brand new modern extension. The owners had acquired some beautiful, large sandstone boulders from offsite to be used in the new landscape and these and the existing Eucalyptus in the rear neighbours garden informed the the…
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Expert Grass Tree advice!
My favourite supplier for Grass Trees is located on the Northern NSW coast they are called Bruinsma Grass Trees and stock lovely healthy specimens, however that is not all they do… They also follow up and offer excellent advice through their newsletter and love talking about growing this iconic sometimes mystifying Australian native. Below I…
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Portfolio: Garden Design West Wollongong
This front garden in West Wollongong was created to function as a place for peaceful relaxation and observation, it also needed to have careful consideration in regards to levels and access to the front gate and letterbox. Originally the front garden was an awkward, uninteresting space filled with easy to grow green plants, that was…
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Grass Trees of Fremantle
I have just come back from Western Australia and have maaaany photos to share, as I am a little overwhelmed by the volume of my images and don’t really know where to start I thought I would start at the beginning of the trip….the first thing (plants) that blew me away. Grass Trees. In the…
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Portfolio: Garden Designs Gordon Update
This is an update about one garden, however within that one garden are 3 very different areas and these areas were approached as stand alone projects and designs and built secretly. I was gaining to blog about them separately but I think it is nice to show how varied one garden can be. You can…
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Portfolio: Marrickville Sketch Design
This is a garden that I have been visiting for a couple of years now, each time I spend an hour or two doing some sketches for the owners to move to the next ‘stage’. It is a wonderful garden spilling over with healthy plants, edibles mixed in with exotics and natives all thriving and…
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Verge Gardens
I am a big fan of a front garden that makes a statement in the street-scape or somehow breaks up the monotony of the suburban front garden ‘norm’. I often kick myself for not being able to stop or being without my camera when I spot a front garden that goes out of its way…
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Striking small inner city front garden
Oh so refreshing to see a small terrace garden used to maximum effect! Imagine if this was more common? how wonderful it would be to walk down an inner city street and see native birds running amok, as they were doing here in the grafted Eucalyptus ficifolia. Well lets face it to walk down any…
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Eucalyptus ‘Silver Princess’ at Heide
I accidentally visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art last month, WOW it was a pretty wonderful accident! They have the most beautiful sculpture gardens, which are expansive and great for kids. The art Gallery itself is also an impressive building surrounded in native gardens with a bit of an edge. I saw this wonderful…
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WBG: Towrie Centre Gardens
Last week I went to a fantastic seed collection workshop held at Wollongong Botanic Gardens in their Towrie Centre, I had never really been to this part of the gardens before and was really envious of the great job they have done. There is a large part of the garden that was bush tucker but…
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Portfolio: Bundeena Garden Design
A steep bush block backing onto the National Park with 180 degree stunning views of the water, how inspiring! When I saw this garden I was pretty much blown away, what a dream to be able to work on this property, the house was newly built and nearly finished, the path and boulders were in…
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How to Plant a Grass Tree
The grass tree is a very symbolic plant to have in a native garden. They can be a specimen plant, a feature plant or work well with a minimalist Japanese theme, and they look amazing in containers. Planting one can be a little daunting as there are many stories out there of them turning up…
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Amazing nature strip garden with real street address!
Last week I went to a garden consult and this is what I encountered across the road from my destination, as I rounded the corner I nearly had an accident checking out these spectacular Xanthorrhoea! They have been planted all around this property and as it is on a corner block make a great impact,…
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Australian Plants Society Open Gardens: Hogue Garden Jannali
This was such a diverse garden, diverse in style with lots of different areas and plantings. When I saw the garden it was full of sun, enabling the owner to grow almost anything! The different areas were almost like little “rooms” and I can imagine moving about the garden during a day letting the sun…
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Australian Plants Society Open Gardens: Aitkin Garden Bonnet Bay
So over the weekend some of the members of the Australian Plant Society Sutherland Group opened their gardens to the general public, for me this is like a dream come true, theres nothing I like more than having a sticky beak in someon-elses garden especially if it is a native garden! Unfortunately I could only…
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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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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.
Tag: Xanthorrhoea