Gardening Australia episode 21 2022

Gardening Australia episode 21 2022

Gardening Australia episode 21 2022: Costa visits the hidden garden of a renowned landscape designer; Sophie meets a grower of the prettiest produce; Jane tours a native mint collection; we meet an ecologist sharing the secrets of her biodiverse backyard.


 

 



Inspiring, entertaining and full of practical advice, join Costa Georgiadis and the team as they unearth gardening ideas, meet avid gardeners and look at some of the most inspiring gardens from across the country.

 

Gardening Australia episode 21 2022

 

Naturally Designed

Costa heads across the bay to visit the garden of a renowned landscape designer who has been inspired by the natural bush setting and the knowledge of the community volunteers who care for it.

Richard Unsworth is known for his stunning inner-city garden designs but an hour away from the CBD he has been working on a very different personal project. He has been bringing life back into a century old, one acre garden that has bushland on one side and the glimmering waters of Pittwater on the other. The garden is framed by spotted gums, there’s a huge ancient bunya pine and iconic Sydney sandstone walls.

Richard first visited friends here 25 years ago and was luckily able to purchase it six years ago with his partner and friends. Getting stuck into the garden straight away he says starting off “it was about removal and letting light into the house and to the garden. The garden was a mass of fishbone ferns and pittosporum trees that had started to seed everywhere.” Not long before becoming a custodian of the site he also lost his mother. “Unbeknownst to me my way of gardening here initially was a way of working through that grief, and it was a beautiful comfort being here. In that way it was a very healing process.”

Top Tip: Kitchen Scraps

Millie smashes garden scraps to cultivate better compost. A really common question is “How do I get things to break down more quickly in my compost – particularly bulky things like broccoli with its woody stem?” If you put a broccoli stalk straight into the compost, it can literally take years to break down. But there is a trick to speed things up!

First of all, remove the leaves (you can eat those, or feed them to your chickens if you have them!) and then grab a hammer or sledgehammer! Give the stem a good hit along the length to break up it up. This will give bacteria and fungi far more access to get in there and start working.

Anything organic will break down given time, but if you have bulky items going into the compost, this will help get things moving along, and they’ll be on their way to being compost for the garden much faster!

Beauty in the Bounty – Gardening Australia episode 21 2022

Sophie meets a passionate home grower who focuses on flavour and colour, showing that you don’t have to choose between ornamental or productive gardening when you grow pretty produce. In the coastal suburb of Glenelg, Monique has built a formal garden with a focus on growing food for her family. Whilst there are loads of ornamental flowers, a lot of the colour and interesting forms actually come from the heirloom vegetables. There’s an array of red and purple shades in the cabbages, cauliflowers, sorrel, kohlrabi, and broad beans that really pop amongst the green.

Whilst aesthetics are important, Monique says “number one has to be flavour so I like to grow things we like to eat as a family so there are certain varieties that will always have a place in my garden year after year and then I also like to pick interesting things that I wouldn’t normally find in the shops.”

The soil is very sandy, which makes for “good drainage but not great water retention and I really have to build up the nutrients.” The vegetable beds have been built up with lots of compost and locally sourced aged manures. The other big challenge is possums and rodents, so she uses crop protection bags, usually seen on fruit trees, to cover up heads of broccoli. Monique also includes decoy plants such as nasturtiums, to distract smaller pests from the brassicas.

Native Plants in Pots

Clarence pots up stunning natives that can be squeezed into any garden.

Clarence has been out collecting a few Aussie natives. They can do pretty much anything in the garden, from providing shade, providing habitat, a beautiful feast, or just looking good. Even if you don’t have a place to plant in your garden, you can always pop them in a pot. There are lots of species more suited to grow in containers, and dwarf cultivars are a great choice for pots with their compact forms.

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