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Don visited one of the very best native gardens in Australia. Amazingly, this beautiful garden is planted on the roof of a house! Deidre and Ivor Morton’s mud brick home appears to be underground, but it is actually built on top of a rock and it nestles sensitively...
Qualup bell (Pimelea physodes) is native to Western Australia. It features drooping flower heads surrounded by large, cream bracts streaked with red. Although it has great potential for cut flowers, this beautiful plant is very hard to grow. Gardeners who live along...
There is a general belief that orchids are hard to grow but this is a myth. They are actually hardy plants when grown in the right climate and conditions. The popular cymbidium orchids are almost unkillable! They come in a fantastic range of flower colours,...
Myths and superstitions are part of the rich fabric of our lives – we rely on them to forecast the weather, tell the future and even to grow plants! The trouble is that sometimes it’s very difficult to separate fact from fiction. Throughout the program Don...
Peter Valder looked at some of the ancient myths associated with plant names Daphne Greek myth: Daphne, the beautiful daughter of a river god and a goddess of the earth, was relentlessly pursued by the sun god, Apollo. Just as Apollo was about to grab Daphne, her...
Maria and Kosta’s Garden – Concreting This week, Nigel and Don worked on the concreting at Kosta and Maria Elfes’ property. Two circular concrete areas, one larger than the other, were poured near the rear of the house and deck. Whilst the deck that...
There are many versatile native plants that not only make excellent ground covers or container plants, but also fit very well into cottage style gardens. On a recent visit to Nielsen’s Native Nursery at Loganholme in Queensland, Don looked at rock daisies,...
Mini Mondo Grass For practical outdoor areas concrete slabs or tiles are a suitable finish but can look bleak and horrible. One solution is to soften the look by using Miniature Mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus ‘Nanus’) around the edges of the groups of...
‘Shademaster’ or Soft Buffalo Grass A lush green lawn adds beauty and value to any home. Unfortunately, a more familiar sight to most gardeners is a thin patchy lawn struggling to survive without enough water or sunlight. One of the best lawn...
Cloudehill is at Olinda in the Dandenongs, about an hour’s drive from Melbourne. Burke’s Backyard has made a point of visiting this spectacular garden over a number of years, and talking to owner Jeremy Francis. At Cloudehill Jeremy combines modern,...