How did I wind up doing this? Three posts to answer a single question that should, by rights, require a book-length answer. But having checked out two simple paths to that meadow look, I can’t put ...
I’m supposed to be doing that promised final post on meadows. But I want to shoot off on a short tangent just cos its current, and if I don’t do it now the moment will have passed. The miniature ...
Natives are having a hard time escaping from the bush. The best of the 1970’s bush gardens by Gordon Ford and Ellis Stones were magical – you know the kind of the thing – huge boulders swellin ...
We’re lazy gardeners in Australia. If we were willing to work half as hard as English gardeners to overcome the disadvantages of our climate while really celebrating its overwhelming advantages, w ...
Check that video link on the right – called (helpfully) ‘The Gardenist Video’. It’s a YouTube clip made by the publishers for booksellers, but it’ll tell you a bit about it. There’s a ne ...
One of the really big questions is how much garden space should be allocated to good, reliable plant matrix, and how much to seasonal, colourful, ephemeral blast. It’s sort of the same as when you ...
Strange how we see things so differently. After my post a few weeks back about Mien Ruys’ garden, a question arose about meadows – whether we can do them here in Australia, and if so, how. I j ...
Even in these enlightened days in which your average home gardener can see the beauty and season-stretching power of foliage and textural seed-heads, there’s no denying that flowers make up about 95 ...
I was hunting for a pretext on which to show off some rare photos of Great Dixter (one of my favourite places in the world, and about which I tend to rant a little too often and at too great a length) ...
How long can it take to decide what to call a post about an incredibly influential Dutch garden designer? Ages, apparently. And I’ve discovered that if I don’t start with a title before I writ ...
Neither snowdrops or hellebores are frost sensitive, and they’re happy in climates colder than the coldest of ours in Australia. But that’s not to say that they’re unaffected by frost. When ...
I’m totally thrown by tropical gardens, or at least by tropical plants. I can’t shake the conviction that, given a tropical climate, I wouldn’t have a clue how to use them effectively together ...
Well, no. It’s not. But it works for an extravagant title, and I wanted to draw attention to the fact that I’m just about to head there in a couple of hours. Amongst several building project ...
In the last 20 years, there’s been something like six gardens that I’ve visited in which I’ve come close to losing the plot altogether – that have made me nearly sick with joy – have made me ...
Now don’t get me wrong. Rosemary is an incredible plant. It grows happily in the toughest, poorest conditions, flowers in the dead of winter and instead of giving off airs of one that’s survivin ...