Gardening Australia episode 36 2021: Sophie Thomson explores a well-designed garden; Clarence Slockee visits a community garden on Yuin Country; Tino Carnevale shares the art of pruning; Josh Byrne learns about WA’s daisies; Jane Edmanson plants veggies in pots.
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 36 2021
Year-Round Goodness
Sophie visits a diverse and beautiful garden, carefully designed to offer interest in every season. Some gardens are primed for a spring flush, others for summer flowering, but some gardens manage to look good all year round. This professional gardener lives, breathes, and works with plants every day, so his home patch provides a place where he can experiment through the seasons, and record the changes.
Adam Hancock and partner Phoebe Conway have lived on their medium-sized suburban block for 7 years. The garden has many of the elements you might see in a larger garden – a native bed of local plants, a dry creek bed that turns into a wetland when it rains, perennial beds and a backyard dedicated to edibles. Whether it’s ornamental or edible, it all looks stunning.
The garden was virtually a blank slate when they arrived. A few deciduous trees, eucalypts and lots of weedy species like ivy, naturalised weeds were the only things present.
Daisies for Days – Gardening Australia episode 36 2021
Josh catches up with former Gardening Australia presenter John Colwill, who has a passion for conserving and cultivating native daisies. When you think of Western Australia’s wildflowers, no doubt you imagine swathes of pink and white everlastings and golden fields. But alongside these iconic species, there is a huge diversity of WA daisies. John Colwill is mad for them; he has even had one named after him, Haptotrichion colwillii! “They really shouldn’t have named it for me, instead the land-holder who led me to it!” John has spent much of the last 40 years locating, observing, recording, and attempting to cultivate some of WA’s unknown but extraordinary daisy species.
The Asteraceae (the daisies) is the second largest plant family on the planet. The thing we call a single daisy ‘flower’ is made up of lots of delicate small flowers, surrounded by protective bracts that we call petals. At night, or in rainy weather, the bracts fold over to protect the delicate flowers. They close at night, like an eye!” Days – eye!
Pruning 101
Tino demonstrates the basics of pruning and explains when to do it for the best results. Tino takes us through the top rules and tools of pruning so you can confidently trim, chop, and shape your plants. Pruning is a really useful skill to hone, no matter the type of garden you have, and you’ll be doing your plants a favour by encouraging healthy growth long-term. Tino takes us through some key techniques, terms, tools, and timing rules to become a confident pruner.
Garden for Good – Gardening Australia episode 36 2021
Clarence Slockee visits a community garden on Yuin Country, created to grow fresh food and connections for the local community. On the NSW South Coast near Nowra, a half hectare property in Terara is being transformed into a productive, edible garden named Kareela Ngura, which translates to ‘country of trees and water’. This community garden has been created by Waminda – South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation, to support their social enterprises and wellbeing programs for local Aboriginal women.
It’s a place to connect to the land and community, learn skills, and is a “ceremonial space for women and elders to be on country” says Health and Wellbeing Manager, Hayley Longbottom.
“People come here, and they learn how to cook things, learn about growing, recipes, taking that home, and in turn that’s feeding their families, their communities.” Produce is used in multiple programs including fruit and vegetable boxes for community members, cooking workshops, and to create products such as spice rubs and teas.
Let’s Grow Shopping
Costa visits a sustainable house and garden, designed to make efficient use of every space.
Mike and partner bought an unrenovated house on a leafy Mt Colah street 10 years ago. Their garden starts on the verge with edibles, and the front yard is a thriving ‘no dig’ food forest. There’s another obvious sign that there’s something interesting going on here – a community swap stall with seeds, plants and books all enclosed in a big, old red phone box.
Mike says he’s met more of my neighbours in the last month, than in seven years!
Mike’s aim is to improve liveability while caring for the planet. Mike renovated the original house to increase its energy efficiency, with solar water and solar electricity. He’s built a hardwood pergola down the west side of the house which hosts a grapevine that shades the house in summer. It’s the first of many clever structural innovations he has installed in his garden using mostly recycled materials.
Vegies in Pots
Jane shares some tips on how to plant and grow vegies in pots. People often want to know if you can you grow vegetables in containers. You certainly can, but you just need to think it through and pick the right plant for the right pot! If you are using a long, shallow windowsill planter for your vegie container, you will need to avoid plants with long, deep roots and instead plant shallow-rooted herbs and vegies.
Rock ‘n’ Soil
Millie meets a scientist at the Earth Science Garden at Monash University to learn more about the roots of Australian soils.
This unique garden is themed around the geological and ecological niches of the Victorian landscape and designed as an outdoor classroom. The garden was completed in 2016, and features 500 specimens of 20 different rock types, from 400-million-year-old limestone and chunks that burst out of volcanoes 8000 years ago! They are all embedded is a garden filled with Australian native species.
Plant Profile: Yellow Saraca – Gardening Australia episode 36 2021
We profile the ornamental Yellow Saraca (Saraca declinata) tree from southeast Asia.
My Garden Path – Dr Daniela Scaccabarozzi
We meet pollination biologist Dr Daniela Scaccabarozzi who is looking into the relationships between native plants and their pollinators.
