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...
‘Environmenta’ is a regional sculpture exhibition held each year by sculptor, Jane Hanson. Jane realised that there are very few opportunities for sculptors, installation artists and landscape designers to show larger works outside a gallery situation, so...
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)...
Red and Gold Makeover In this fun makeover, Don demonstrated how to use colourful foliage plants to complement the colours on a house. The roof of the little cottage was red, and the walls were painted a yellowish colour. The front garden (actually a huge...
Sam and Dianne’s Garden Dianne and Sam Chi have lovingly developed their 2-hectare (5 acre) garden over the past 21 years. Today it is a wonderful blend of both English and oriental influences. It features sweeping lawns, ponds, fountains, a large ornamental...
Spaceship Garden Dallas Kampe finished building his house in 1985. At that time the garden was bare, except for a few wattle trees growing on the property. Inspired by his love of tropical gardens and several trips to South-East Asia, Dallas began collecting plants...