Edible Kitchen Garden Have you ever dreamt of an exotic Lebanese courtyard, with the smell of herbs and spices wafting through the air? Well that’s exactly what the Blitz team decided to create for Asma Sarkis. Asma arrived from Lebanon thirty...
Kitchen Vegie Garden The son of a female convict, William Charles Wentworth was born in New South Wales in 1790. He became famous in 1813 when, along with Gregory Blaxland and Lieutenant William Lawson, he found a way across the Blue Mountains. This discovery gave the...
Spring Tart Up If your garden is looking at bit drab at the moment, why not give it a quick spring tart up? The best place to look for inspiration is your local nursery. The really good plant shops around Australia plan their spring displays so that customers can see...
Update Native Pruning About eighteen months ago Don visited the Cumberland State Forest Nursery in Sydney and talked to Steve Sullivan, Operations Manager, State Forest Nurseries about renovation pruning of native plants. They looked at a fifteen-year-old Grevillea...
Viewers’ Letters Giant Crepe Myrtle A few weeks ago on the program we showed a photograph of an enormous crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) growing in Donnybrook, Western Australia. It was about 10m (35′) high! Since then we’ve received another...
Don looked at a row of standard Hill’s weeping figs (Ficus microcarpa var. hillii) growing by the side of a driveway. These large, evergreen trees come from the rainforests of coastal Queensland. They have large, short main trunks or several main trunks...
Weird Carrots Don reached into the Burke’s Backyard mailbag and pulled out two interesting letters from viewers with problems growing vegetables. Both gardeners enclosed photographs of twisted, bizarre-looking carrots. Carrots need a light, well-drained soil,...
Wood Ash in the Garden Now that those chilly winter evenings are here, lots of people have been stoking up their slow combustion heaters or warming themselves in front of glowing open fireplaces. In fact many of those people have written in to Burke’s...
Yates Anti Rot Phosacid Many of the fungicides that were once used in the garden were quite dangerous to us and to the environment. Many diseases are also resistant to some of the commonly used fungicides. The good news is that there is now a very safe and effective...
Matching Plants to Pots Don visited Michele Shennen’s Willoughby Garden Centre and chatted to Michele about the very latest trends in pots. Michele explained that new ranges of pots are being imported from all over the world these days, giving...