After watching our program on the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, Jenny Morris fell in love with the new 'Maggie' rose. She sent Don an email asking how to incorporate a rose plot into her existing native garden without it looking completely wrong and out of place.

Don and the Burke's Backyard team headed off to Jenny's place to solve this classic problem. Don created a circular rose garden framed by a palisade of railway sleepers. A sculpture made from a plumber's drainage eel formed a centrepiece for the rose plot. Behind the roses a new native garden was planted to hide the old fence and blend in with the existing garden.

Adventurous makeover

Don used wooden pegs, string lines and survey marking paint to set out the new beds. The grass was removed using a turf cutter (a sharp spade would also do the job) and barrowed away. The soil was then dug over by hand to remove any subterranean grass runners. Tip: We had to work quickly for television, but at home the best way to remove grass is to spray with Roundup or Zero. Wait 2 or 3 weeks, respray if necessary, wait another few weeks and then rotary hoe all the dead grass into the soil.) The old sleepers were cut to length, so that the highest point of the semicircular backdrop would be about 1 metre at the rear, graduating to 100mm (4") at the front. Each sleeper was treated with a wood preservative and installed vertically inground in quickset concrete. Washed river sand was incorporated into the soil for the native garden, and a soil conditioner of mushroom compost was added to the rose bed. An old electric eel was pulled apart and the bits were inserted into some plastic pipe to hold the 'sculpture' together. The pipe was then buried in the middle of the rose garden. Don put in a mixture of lovely native plants behind the rose garden, including wax flowers (Philotheca myoporoides 'Profusion'), vitex (Vitex trifolia ‘Purpurea’), crinum lilies (Crinum pedunculatum), grevilleas (Grevillea ‘Scarlet Sprite’), everlasting daisies (Bracteantha bracteata) and brachyscomes (Brachyscome multifida).

Everlasting Daisies

Grevillea 'Scarlet sprite'

Wax Flower

Vitex

Two different roses were planted in the circular rose bed, ‘Crepuscule’ with pale orange flowers ageing to warm, golden apricot, and 'Maggie' with fragrant, softly ruffled double blooms in soft white to lemon. Hardenbergia violacea 'Happy Wanderer', a native scrambler and climber, was also planted in the rose bed to add rich blue colour to the gold and lemon rose palette. Finally the new beds were mulched and watered. Don used pine bark fines on the native garden, and lucerne chaff around the roses.

Rosa 'Maggie'

Hardenbergia

Approximate costs

survey marking paint, $11 for 350ml from hardware stores

turf cutter, $110 for 4 hours or $138 per day from hire equipment suppliers

washed river sand, $45 per tonne

old railway sleepers, $20 each

quickset concrete, $15 for 40kg bag

mushroom  compost, $34 per cubic metre

old drainage eel, from scrapyards

fine pine bark, $50-$55 per cubic metre

lucerne chaff, $25 for 30kg bag

 

Plants

Rosa Maggie (var. Meichibon) and Rosa 'Crepuscule', bare-rooted $15, potted $20-$25

Grevillea ‘Scarlet Sprite’ 200mm (8") pots, $18

Philotheca myoporoides ‘Profusion’, 200mm (8") pots, $22

Vitex trifolia ‘Purpurea’, 300mm (12") pots, $65

Bracteantha bracteata, 200mm (8") pots, $16

Brachyscome multifida, 200mm (8") pots, $16

Crinum pedunculatum, 300mm (12") pots, $60

Hardenbergia violacea ‘Happy Wanderer’, 140mm (6") pots, $10

Copyright CTC Productions 2004