In the Garden

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...

The design of Sherrie and Nathan Fawle’s garden was based on an article they read in the October 2001 edition of the Burke’s Backyard Magazine. Their garden is still under construction, but stage one, the courtyard area, is complete. The result is...

This East Hawthorn garden is three years old. Rick Eckersley’s design enhances the architecture of the Victorian residence and also provides a backdrop for the family’s lifestyle. Rick describes the garden style as one that reflects Australia’s...

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...

Camellias are wonderful plants. Most varieties have attractive, glossy green foliage, and they put on their fabulous flower display in the cooler months of the year when the rest of the garden often looks dull and bare. As well as making excellent specimen plants and...

Cheryl Maddocks has written 34 books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles on gardening. She is the gardening columnist for the Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age), and she is also a member of the horticultural team at Burke’s Backyard. In...