One of Don’s all time favourite trees, the lemon-scented gum announces its presence in a garden or street by the delicious lemon fragrance from the leaves. The perfume is particularly noticeable after rain. Plant details Common name: Lemon-scented gum Botanic...
Our first Plant of the Week for 2004 is Philodendron ‘Xanadu’. Philodendrons originate in tropical USA, the West Indies and South America, and are popular for their lush foliage and dramatically lobed leaves. Many are climbers, and do well as indoor plants...
You might remember a year ago Don visited Mick and Anna Perri at their home on Sydney’s northern beaches. Mick is an expert gardener who has been growing fruit and vegetables on his property for 24 years. Don and Mick planted some tropical and subtropical fruit...
Now is the perfect time to go to your nursery and choose an autumn foliage tree for your garden. It’s also a great time to plant a shrub or tree, because anything planted now will have a chance to send its roots out and establish, rest over winter and then power away...
All elm trees have a simple identifying feature: the leaf bases are one-sided, or asymmetrical. Don picked a leaf from a Chinese weeping elm and examined its base. One side was wedge-shaped (cuneate) and the other rounded (obtuse). This beautiful evergreen or partly...
Eucalyptus leucoxylon ssp.megalocarpa Our native gum trees are an essential part of Australian life, particularly for wildlife. While many are too large to consider planting in the average garden some are of a small to medium size and offer attractive and...
Tree Waratah The tree waratah in flower will stop you in your tracks. It is a native tree that comes from the Queensland rainforests. It is striking in flower when it is laden with bold scarlet red waratah-like flowers. At other times it has dark green leaves. Details...
Rhapis Palms are great as indoor plants and like most good indoor plants they come from a sub-tropical to tropical rainforest in south-east China where there isn’t much natural light. There are two sorts of Rhapis palms suitable for indoor living. Plant details...
The Golden Robinia (Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’) was a vogue tree in Australian gardens and landscapes during the 1980s and is still popular today. It is widely used as a street tree, particularly in polluted areas and, because of its small size and...
Gum trees have had a lot of bad press: they grow too big, fall over, drop branches and have other habits gardeners will not tolerate. But these problems relate to some species, often badly planted or positioned, not to all gum trees. Some of the species that have...