In the Garden

Ross and Rosemary Haywood’s inspirational garden, ‘Girrawheen’, has been developed over a 20-year period. When Ross and Rosemary first purchased the property, it consisted of a small house surrounded by gum trees. They removed most of the trees,...

Don looked at a modern interpretation of an historic garden that might have been seen around a house built in the late 1890s. The design is a collaboration between Interior Designer, Christian Lyon, and Landscape Designer, Jo Taylor. ‘Granny Goes Groovy’...

Regular viewers of Burke’s Backyard may remember the garden belonging to Merve and Olwyn Hodge, at Logan Reserve in Brisbane. This is one of the very best native gardens in the country, and it will open under Australia’s Open Garden Scheme this weekend....

This inner city courtyard is a very good example of how to create a garden in a small space. The owners moved to Sydney from Adelaide six years ago and virtually brought the backyard with them. They moved from a house with a courtyard so most of the plants were in...

Don looked at a contemporary, Japanese-style garden at Noosa, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Local landscape designers Anne-Marie and Dror Barkai designed the garden to add interest to a stark, white, modular building. Their solution to a difficult design...

Don looked at two low maintenance gardens designed by Ted Whitley, of Sacred Grove Gardens in Sydney. Ted has combined native and succulent plant varieties to achieve year-round visual appeal, while minimising the work involved in maintaining them. Paddington...

Don made over the front garden of a Sydney cottage using a dramatic mixture of black and yellow foliage plants. The wonderful thing about foliage plants is that they look good all year round, even when there are no flowers, because they have interesting leaf colours,...

Bob Maher recently sent a letter to Don, and invited him to come and see his garden. When Bob and his family first moved into their Newcastle townhouse 12 months ago, they were confronted with a small backyard (6mx5m) consisting of a bit of grass and a fence. So, with...

Although on a tight budget, Bronwyn and John Chippendale were prepared to spend money on the structure of their garden. They realised that if the bones were right, the rest would fall into place. They called in landscape designer Phillip O’Malley, and asked him...

Don made over a messy courtyard for under $500, with really spectacular results. A gaggle of potted plants was replaced with two smart planter boxes and a bench seat, constructed by Backyard Blitz builder, Scott Cam. The existing bangalow palms, bromeliads and...