Just before Christmas I was telling a friend that I’d spotted and lusted over a stunning plant of Clematis x jackmanii ‘Superba’ in our local nursery, and, though I’d planned to plant one in t ...
Just clipping my English box given the cool and cloudy weather, thus minimizing the post-clip burn that can decimate these otherwise bullet-proof plants. Box manifests in three forms here – sphere ...
A few years back I was checking out a stand of ornamental grasses at Chelsea Flower Show and was curious about the range of unfamiliar (and mostly evergreen) grasses on display. I liked them well en ...
Some plants just make you ache. There’s thousands of plants I like, hundreds that I love, and just a few that can make my heart skip a beat – plants that hold my attention for ages, and then hav ...
Just on a quick dash to the Adelaide Hills for a wedding today, and driving through Stirling this morning, there was an audible gasp from the drivers seat as this roundabout came into view. Couldn’t ...
Yesterday I had the unexpected chance to hear a talk – in my own home-town, and free of charge – by Robert Hammond, Executive Director of the Friends of the High Line, and one of the two men respo ...
Not far from home there’s a very ornamentally suckering clump of that old, old thing – I was going to say ‘dear old thing’ – which we always called Cedrela. The common name (the use of whi ...
Car troubles yesterday had me walking home from the garage. I didn’t regret this at all, as I’d spotted one or two Gladiolus tristis in the grass on the side of the road from the car, and I wa ...
It’s diabolically windy out there. I’m wondering if guy-ropes might help to keep the house on location, like Gulliver pinned to the ground by the Lilliputians. Must get me some decent pegs. It ...
It feels kind of lame to be writing about an observation that will have no impact without also explaining the problem to which it pertains. It’s a bit like trying to explain a joke. The best you ...
Woodend has exploded into pear blossom. I’m temporarily charmed. Lets get one thing out of the way that’s irrelevant to the argument, but I’d feel dishonest if I didn’t mention. I’m no f ...
Had to make a quick dash up to Duneira on Mt. Macedon the other day, and turned into that incredible drive – possibly one of the loveliest in Australia – soon to be lined with millions of bluebell ...
Many of the pleasures of gardening are direct and overt, and others just lurk beyond grasp-ability. Some are concrete, some just suggested or hinted at. Benches and garden seats, for instance, are a ...
It has just this minute started snowing. The best part of it is that it’s just so beautiful. So wildly charming. So emphatically silent. It’s also (in this climate, at least), a universal stop ...
The Gardenist (the book) started out much bigger than that which was eventually published. We deleted nearly half the word count a few months before pressing the ‘print’ button. Each chapter ...
I loved being at the talk Mat Murray (RBG Sydney) gave to the Victorian Group of The Alpine Garden Society a few weeks back. Not only did I pick up on the debunking of a few myths (like the need to ...
With about one sunny day every seven – if we’re lucky – I’m changing the terms by which I judge a snowdrop. On those occasional sunny days you can almost hear the snowdrops making stretching n ...