Trees are great survivors; some can live for hundreds to thousands of years. Don looked at two magnificent old gums in his garden, which to the casual observer look half dead and ready for the chop. Both are centuries old and even though they have hollows and parts of...
Scott Cam, the builder from the Backyard Blitz team, has some valuable advice on buying the best circular saw for home use. He recommends lightweight machines with a small blade diameter – that is blade diameters of 162mm (6 1/2″) to 185mm (7 1/4″)....
Potted plants can look very effective around the home, but it’s often difficult to buy pots that work well with the colours of the house and garden. Don demonstrated an easy solution to this problem. He purchased some standard terracotta pots (which are not as...
Clay Soils Many people think that the worst soil you can have in the garden is heavy clay. However, Don explained that any soil can be a good garden soil. Indeed, most natural soils in Australia are suitable for growing a garden. In most instances it is better to...
About 10 months ago Don reworked an azalea hedge that had grown so tall it was blocking the light and obscuring the view from the house. The pruning was done in late spring, after the main flush of flowers had finished. In order to reshape the hedge it had to be cut...
Rosemary Healion wrote a letter to Burke’s Backyard begging Don to come and save her garden. Just over twelve months ago she and her husband, Craig, hired a local landscaper to create a curved, paved edging in their backyard. Instead, the Healions were faced...
Jackie French made an environmentally friendly snail trap using a plastic drink bottle and some beer. Snails are attracted to these traps because they love the sweet, sour and yeasty smell of the beer. When the snails crawl into the trap, they either drown or the...
Don came across a thriving row of grevilleas (Grevillea ‘Robyn Gordon’). When the gardener, Brian, planted the grevilleas, he followed two important gardening principles: 1. Plants grow better in raised beds Raised garden beds provide good drainage, which...
Don looked at a camellia suffering from a problem called ‘balling’. It should have been a mass of flowers but instead, few flowers had opened. Most of the buds had browned and fallen unopened to the ground, and were scattered under the shrub. Balling...
The cheapest and best way to buy plants is to purchase them in small pots known as ‘tubes’. Tubes are long and thin, with ridges running down the sides to encourage the roots of the plant to grow downwards, rather than coiling around the sides. Although tubestock is...