Japanese Garden Although many Australians dream of living near the beach, gardening by the seaside can be quite a challenge. Not only are beach sites usually very windy, but the plants also have to cope with sandy soil and salt spray. Don visited a Japanese-style...
Retired opera singer Maureen Williams and her husband Frank own one of the finest Japanese-style gardens in Australia. It was designed and built for the previous owners by Ken Lamb of Imperial Gardens, Sydney. His brief was to create a garden that would be walked...
Don transformed an ugly, useless part of the garden into a fabulous feature area complete with colourful plants, a spectacular fish pond and a waterfall. One of the most important reasons for this makeover was that a large picture window in the family room of the...
Don looked at a contemporary Balinese-style house and garden designed to work beautifully with the warm, Queensland climate. Architect Paul Clout has opened up parts of the house to take advantage of the fabulous water views and also to blur the distinction between...
The latest trend in garden design in Australia is to create ‘theatrical’ gardens, which often contain elements from other countries and cultures. The inspiration may come from holiday travel. Back home you can create a garden to remind you of your holidays...
Tugurium Stephen Ryan and Craig Lidgerwood showed Don around ‘Tugurium’, their cool climate garden at Macedon in Victoria. Many Victorian’s know Stephen as a gardening author and broadcaster, as well as a nursery owner. He is the proprietor of...
War of the Roses Gardens are often restful places where people can relax, take a break from the stresses of everyday life and be at one with nature. However, when Don visited the Melbourne home of Joanne and Mark Hosie, he found that the peace and quiet was disrupted...
Sue Tapping dreamed of having a waterfall in the garden, so Wayne, her husband, spent 10 months building a magnificent water feature in their backyard. It is constructed on three levels, with water cascading down in stages from top to bottom. Wayne built the pools...
Rob Piller wrote to tell us about the novel way his father, Henk, has covered his inground pool to provide more usable space in the backyard. Rob, the youngest of Henk and Wilma Piller’s children, left home in 1985. Henk has been maintaining the pool ever since,...
The work of renowned Australian landscape designer, Paul Bangay, has often been shown on Burke’s Backyard. For this week’s program, Don travelled 70 kms north-west of Melbourne to Woodend, where Paul is creating his own country garden. The 1.2ha (3 acre)...