THIS has been the most beautifully exhuberant spring along the Border. Gardens have been full of colour, and displaying lots of growth. We are also enjoying the re-appearance of new foliage on deciduous plants, which is fresh and exciting to watch develop! Young leaves are generally a lighter shade of green than the mature specimen. [...]
Blue flowers are always popular during the warmer months, especially where the temperatures get high, because it is such a cool colour and because there are no other colours with which it doesn’t blend well. There are lots of plants now available which produce this colour flower. Many of them have grey or silver foliage [...]
Orchids are one plant which raise strong feelings among gardeners – they either love them or want nothing to do with them, mainly because they believe they are difficult to grow. There are so many different varieties. Every continent, except Antarctica, has its own native orchids, and Australian ground orchids have grown enormously in popularity [...]
Every year at this time new plants come into nurseries. It is amazing how horticulturalists continually come up with new cultivars of well-loved species like Hydrangeas. This year there are beautiful new hydrangeas in the “Tea Time” series, with the old-fashioned mop-head style flowers in many different colours ranging from white, all through the pinks [...]
Even though it is still officially winter, we always get a few perfect, spring-like days this month, often lulling us into a false sense of well-being in the garden! This is encouraged by the sight of flowering Hellebores, camellias and lots of native shrubs. However, susceptible plants still need protection from late frosts, especially if [...]
Australia’s Open Garden Scheme started in 1987 after local gardeners had experienced garden visits under a similar scheme in England. It is a not-for-profit organisation which promotes knowledge and pleasure in gardens and gardening across Australia through opening gardens and holding other garden-related occasions. There is a board of directors and a chief executive officer [...]
Floriade in Canberra has become a very well-established horticultural event in our gardening calendar. I notice that Martins are already advertising bus trips available for this years’ event. It will run from 15 September – 16 October. A feature of this years’ garden festival will be a Second World War Victory Garden, created by the [...]
We live in an area in which there are very few days indeed when the weather is too inclement to get outside. The nights may be cold and frosty, but the days are very often perfectly sunny and still. This sort of weather is absolutely perfect for so many winter-flowering shrubs and perennials, and many [...]
PERENNIALS are those plants which have a life-span of more than a year, as annuals do, but are not classified as trees, shrubs or climbers. An important characteristic is the need to cut them back to ground-level after flowering. Most have soft stems except some which get a little woody with age, and they are [...]
MOST gardeners know what another is referring to when the word “Chelsea” is mentioned. The Chelsea Flower Show, run by the Royal Horticultural Society and attracting royal patronage, is probably the premium horticultural show in the world. Apart from the interruptions caused by the World Wars it has run pretty well continuously since 1913 in [...]