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This vibrant garden gives a contemporary image to an inner-suburban Victorian style home. There is a traditional structure to the garden reminiscent of Versailles but it is composed of brightly coloured materials, pebbles and columns. The simple plantings and hard...
In the past few weeks Burke’s Backyard has received letters concerning strangely shaped citrus. Two problems occur on citrus that will produce weird looking fruit but are not major problems and can be left untreated. These are citrus bud mite and Citrus Scab....
There’s nothing quite like a water feature in the garden because it always looks wonderful. Whether it’s a large water lily pond like Monet’s garden at Giverny, a Chinese network of water features or fountains and waterfalls in an Australian garden,...
One of the rather worrying things for many gardeners is the strange things you see on your plants. Leaves, branches and even fruit can develop pimples, lumps, bumps and all sorts of horrible things which can be very confusing. Generally lumps and bumps on plants are...
Root rot is a disease that can affect a range of plants in your garden and which can spread through the soil. It can kill plants in a very short space of time and can be difficult to control. Some plants are very susceptible to this disease. Don Burke recently looked...
Weeding is probably the worst part of gardening and you can waste vast amounts of time pulling weeds out of the garden. There are however a number of different methods that will address the problem. 1. Sprays Spraying the weeds in the garden with Round Up or Zero...
An Australian native plant that occurs naturally in New Zealand as well is Canberra Grass. In fact it is not a grass and has an appearance like moss but is from the same family as the carnation (Family Caryophylloceae). Plant Details Common name: Canberra Grass (in...
Everybody wants the perfect lawn which looks as good as a bowling green without all the hard work. An old favourite is Kikuyu lawn, a runner grass which is vigorous and easy to grow. Advantages: tolerant of heavy wear and traffic vigorous and easy to grow...
Steps, pavers, concrete slabs or tiles can look very stark and harsh in the garden. A popular landscaping trick is to tone down these areas using one of the varieties of mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus). Don visited Bronte House in Sydney, where mondo grass has been...
Bonsai is the art of illusion. The aim is to recreate nature on a small scale, that is growing and training a small tree in relatively few years to give the impression of a full-sized tree hundreds of years old. Pruning a bonsai On ‘Burke’s Backyard’...