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00:00Ha-ha-ha!
00:06Hey! Hi!
00:12Ooh!
00:18Hey!
00:20Hey, buddy.
00:22Hey!
00:24Hello and welcome to Gardening Australia.
00:36I'm on Wurundjeri Country, checking out the stunning Chelsea Australia Garden at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges.
00:45And it's the perfect place to be, because this week we're celebrating Australia's great gardens.
00:54I'm talking about those gardens that take a big swing and knock it out of the park.
01:00The ones that stop you in your tracks.
01:02The ones that make you go, hold the phone, I need a bit of that in my life.
01:07Here's all the other greatness we've got coming your way.
01:13A tropical garden never stops.
01:15I'm meeting gardeners in far north Queensland who take joy from the labour of constant renewal through the swings of the seasons.
01:22I'm visiting one of the most playful and innovative gardens that I've ever seen.
01:28It's been designed to thrive in the very beautiful but harsh climate here in central Victoria.
01:34And I cannot wait to share it with you.
01:37Join me in South Australia's beautiful Eyre Peninsula as I tour a coastal garden full of colour and whimsy.
01:44We all derive some kind of meaning from our gardens.
01:49I'm visiting a garden that reveals so much about the person who dreamt it up.
01:54My garden is the most important thing in my life.
01:58It's like breathing really.
02:00Dense.
02:01Delicate.
02:02Spiky.
02:03Soft.
02:04Ancient.
02:05Colourful.
02:06And dramatic.
02:07I love everything about the plants of the Australian bush.
02:12And I'm visiting a new public garden designed by someone who obviously feels the same way.
02:19I love everything about the plants of the Australian bush and I'm visiting a new public garden designed by someone who obviously feels the same way.
02:33They're from our country, it connects me to this amazing place and I just want to see them everywhere.
02:50I'm in the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden where the relatively new Chelsea Australian garden is already looking well and truly established.
03:02This is Phil Johnson's upsized adaptation of a garden he and his team designed and built for England's famous Chelsea Flower Show back in 2013 when he and his team won gold and best in show.
03:20A huge achievement that shared Australian flora and design with the world.
03:26Guys, what's today been like?
03:28Oh, the most incredible day second to having a baby.
03:31Watching it with my baby.
03:33Well, 12 years ago we won gold and best in show with a unanimous decision at the centenary year of the Chelsea Flower Show.
03:40To get here it's taken another 10 years to get funding, the planning, the design and then to build it was epic.
03:48While the original show garden was squeezed into a concentrated 220 square metre plot, the new one can afford to stretch out a little more.
03:58Built on what was once part of the Olinda golf course, the garden spreads over a much more generous 6,000 square metres and even gets a bit of borrowed vertical real estate from the region's iconic mountain ash.
04:15And the plants are the backbone.
04:20I'm a horticulturist and I'm all about plants.
04:24Now we have over 400 different species of native plants in this garden.
04:30Wow.
04:31And it's actually quite sad to say we actually have close to a hundred threatened and endangered species in this garden as a collection, which is pretty humbling and pretty devastating to actually realise that.
04:44But I think it's a wonderful natural encyclopedia for people to come enjoy, learn about plants that we can grow in our urban environment.
04:56And it's like a speaker, it's like an amplifier of these stories for people to come and share and learn.
05:04Oh, that's endangered, but look at it in this context.
05:11How did you choose your pallet of plants?
05:13I wanted plants from throughout the country to represent all different areas of Australia, like the Blutheminder, which is just such a beautiful plant.
05:21These transitional wet and boggy areas for our Swamp Banks years.
05:25Another favourite one is my Meeboldina, but hey, you must love the Qualops.
05:30They're looking fantastic, aren't they?
05:31Look at the colour, the lime green drifting into the pinky red.
05:35It's spectacular.
05:36Extraordinary plant.
05:37Tell me a little bit about the layout and the design choices that you made.
05:47And really, I wanted garden beds that had good depth.
05:49So we could create layers and layers of planting, some small shrubs to ground covers to the architectural Xantheria glaucas.
05:57And just creating these focal points, these views, the vistas, like looking through to the Queensland bottle tree.
06:04We've got like combinations.
06:06We haven't just got one.
06:07We've got big ones right down to the little juvenile little baby ones.
06:10So plant a couple together.
06:11They look great.
06:12And then look at this view line.
06:14We've got this focal point looking straight down to the Waratah sculpture that was designed by Dylan Brady.
06:19Tell us about the build.
06:22Let's think about the worst weather you could possibly build anything in.
06:26On top of the mountain in red soil.
06:28That's what we built in.
06:29It was full on.
06:30Mud, mud, mud, more mud.
06:32We're building on a slope.
06:34We're building on a substantial level change.
06:36We had to make it wheelchair accessible.
06:39So that was our number one driver.
06:41Then if we excavated substantially, like six metres into that hill, it allowed us to create depth of garden beds.
06:48It allowed us to create the size of the billabong that works with the space around this natural amphitheatre of the big, massive mountain ash.
06:57What would you say is the key feature of this garden, the building block?
07:04As a designer and very much a conservationist, passionate about conservation and the importance of connection to nature is really the soul is the billabong.
07:14The billabong fluctuates seasonally.
07:17I think that's something really important in this country.
07:20We know it's an extremely dry continent.
07:22We need to design for climate change.
07:24We don't have these bodies of water that are always static and always up at the top of the coping.
07:28We designed this to purposely fluctuate seasonally.
07:32Guess what?
07:33My favourite part of this is this beautiful stormwater engineered drain.
07:39That stormwater drain has allowed us to create this incredible habitat ecosystem.
07:47And it's great, isn't it, that the word drain is saying drain it away, but you're actually doing what nature wants, which is slow it down.
07:55Slow it down.
07:56Capture it.
07:57And then, of course, that quality is upheld by the plants.
08:02So these are local plants to the local area.
08:04That's what cleans our waterways.
08:06Every single waterway, creeks, billabongs across this country has these pallets of plants or once did have those pallets of plants.
08:14We've got some of my favourites.
08:16You've got your nardu.
08:17It's got that four-leaf clover.
08:18Even it's got some droplets of water on it right now.
08:21Balmy is another lovely plant.
08:24Great habitat for frogs and things.
08:27And one of my favourites is your water ribbon.
08:31It's a bush food.
08:32It has a beautiful flower spike as well.
08:35And it's a great habitat again.
08:40The focal point of the billabong is the five-metre rock wall.
08:44It not only gives multiple solar-powered waterfalls an impressive height to fall from,
08:50but this side is deliberately south-facing,
08:54which creates a microclimate for the spectacular tree ferns to shelter from the sun.
09:07Phil's design style celebrates light, texture, contrast and spatial harmony,
09:14all informed by the way he perceives the world.
09:17Actually, I'm colour blind. Did you know that?
09:21No.
09:22I never told anyone until, like, a few years ago.
09:25When someone says, see the red flower over there.
09:27Where?
09:28I can see the foliage and the structure, but I can't see the redness against the green.
09:33And then purples and blues and mauves, pinks and reds, and, yeah, there's a bit going on in there.
09:41But what an incredible thing. As a landscape designer, most people are thinking,
09:45oh, plants, flowers, colour, colour, colour, yet you've got this different angle.
09:51I think it allows me to see things in a different light, different textures.
09:54Yeah, that reminds me, my dad was an incredible photographer,
09:59and he did it in black and white, and he saw light.
10:02It works really well.
10:05But over in London, after I won the Chelsea Flower Show,
10:08I started telling people that I was colour blind after that.
10:10And I encourage everyone to be proud of being colour blind, I tell you that.
10:16You've dedicated a large chunk of your life since the success of Chelsea
10:21to getting this garden up and going here.
10:25What is it that you want people to take away from this effort and this space?
10:32Not everyone had the opportunity to go to London.
10:35Now you can come here and actually experience that.
10:39Quite moving to be in this space now and to see the joy it brings to people.
10:44What is it about the connection to plants that you want people to feel like you do?
10:52To be proud of what we have.
10:56Not always search for Tuscany, search for Europe.
11:01Be proud of what we have here.
11:03We have the most extraordinary pallet of plants to work with.
11:08I love just hearing people being inspired by that plant
11:13and actually then going and buying that plant.
11:15That's done. I've done my job. That's amazing.
11:17That's them getting on board of this little revolution.
11:21That we need in this country to connect people back to nature.
11:36If you've been waiting for a moment to grab a cup of tea,
11:39now is not that moment.
11:41It's not every day we travel to tropical Cairns.
11:45But when we do, we go straight to the top.
11:48You're about to see one of the warmest, luscious, greenest, greatest gardens of the year.
11:56So sit back and enjoy.
11:58Without that cuppa.
12:00I'm in Freshwater, a leafy suburb of Cairns in far north Queensland.
12:14The 16-year-old garden I'm visiting today is on a fairly average sized block
12:18and there are tropical plants in rounded beds spilling out onto the street.
12:27Gardening in the tropics is not for the faint hearted.
12:30This garden gets over two metres of rain each year.
12:34And in winter, the average top temperature is still 24 degrees.
12:41Just two good reasons why equatorial tropical plants absolutely love it.
12:49It's been over a decade since we last visited.
12:51So I'm catching up with Mark and Fairley to see how their tropical paradise has grown.
12:57Well, it's a lush collection of rare and exotic tropical foliage plants.
13:04I mean, there's flowers too, obviously, but it's a lot of plants that look fantastic.
13:09But they're iconic to the tropics.
13:12People come and they just feel they're in the rainforest.
13:16Even though it's not rainforest, it's actually a collection of plants.
13:20And it's got beautiful winding paths and it's just very lush.
13:23It's really inviting, I suppose.
13:26And it's cool in the heat.
13:28It's a bit of a haven, really, isn't it?
13:32Huge, lush green leaves are a hallmark of the tropics.
13:36And philodendrons and palms add big structural shapes to the garden.
13:41With the large round fans of Likawala grandis a reliable standout.
13:46So I can see a lot of work has gone into this garden.
13:48It's all terraced and it's well planted.
13:51What did you first do?
13:52I did a massive amount of earth work.
13:56You know, we needed a little bit of a level area, so we flattened things out.
14:00We created a pool area.
14:03Most of what you see here now was created.
14:06The defined areas were probably representative of particular plant varieties.
14:13Some that required sunny areas, some that required shady areas.
14:16We've got a beautiful lychee tree up there that had this fantastic dappled light.
14:21So that was always going to be an area that had shade loving plants, you know.
14:26Mark is a horticulturist and landscape designer.
14:29While Fairley is an interior designer.
14:31Coming out there.
14:32And they approached the garden as a combined creative force.
14:35So Mark, you're the gardener and with your design skills, how do you find that complements each other?
14:41Well, I probably bring the horticultural expertise, being a plant lover and collector.
14:48I just bring in the principles of design using balance, the texture, colour.
14:55Particular, say colour, you would use a bright colour in a shaded area so that you've got a focal point.
15:04Bright golden yellow of sacred barley bamboo almost glows against the green.
15:11With bursts of pink from aglanemers alongside the ultraviolet leaves of strobilanthi.
15:17It's nice to enjoy the individual plant, but the individual plant needs to be positioned with other individual plants
15:23so that they form a cohesive, interesting look to it, as you would do dressing up a lounge room.
15:31You put pictures on the walls and you put the flowers over here and you create your vistas and your focal points.
15:37And we do it with plants.
15:39I suppose one of the principles of design is always create an area for its function.
15:45So, you know, we've got flat areas for sitting, lovely paths to wander through, and with a vista at the end usually, which will draw your eye into the area.
15:59So, we sort of like to create areas that you want to go to.
16:03So, I can see you've got lots of things planted en masse.
16:09I love using mass planting because it creates a lot of visual impact.
16:13You know, using selaginellas and schismatic lotus bromeliads always give a great look.
16:20Yeah, I mean, the selaginellas look great, just like draped and cascading down the stairs.
16:25They do. They form a lot of visual interest, I think, filling in all the gaps, I guess.
16:30And that's what mass planting does, it's filling in gaps, isn't it?
16:33Yeah. And do you typically choose plants? I mean, what's your process?
16:37Well, a plant that has to grow together well in a group is always going to work.
16:44It's usually got some very interesting leaf form, so that creates a lot of visual impact.
16:50It's got to be an interesting-looking little ground cover, really.
16:55So, your garden is on quite a steep slope. How do you manage all the water during the wet season?
17:08Yeah, the rain is something to consider.
17:11There is a lot of overflow, but I've swaled the paths so they direct water away.
17:16And all the foliage and the hip-thick plantings will often slow water down.
17:20But I still lose paths every year.
17:22You know, there's so much rain coming in, I have to replace the surfaces.
17:26Every year?
17:27Pretty well.
17:28I guess water would wash away a lot of the organic matter and whatever you're adding to the soil.
17:33A lot of leaching with so much rain, so lots of dolomite.
17:37I would fertilise four to five times a year.
17:40That's quite a process then, to feed multiple times a year.
17:43Yeah, you have to do it.
17:44You know, you've got such rapid rates of growth for some of the plants that nutrient uptake is like nowhere else.
17:54So, I'm quite happy to apply fertilisers a lot, just so I keep the rapid growth happening.
17:59So, your toolkit's probably a lot different to mine here in the tropics?
18:02It's a pretty powerful toolkit. I need tools that are really going to work strongly on very fast-growing lush plants.
18:14Things like machetes, ginger knives. I've got a special banana shovel which gets down deep into these big fleshy banana roots.
18:22You know, plants like heliconias, which are super fast-growing, really need to be pruned, you know, sometimes four times a year.
18:31Wow.
18:33With the heliconias, once that stem grows and flowers, which is only a year generally, I need to prune that whole section out, throw it away, and that allows new growth to come through.
18:43So, gardening in the tropics sounds incredibly challenging. Is it worth it?
18:47It is. I love it. It's a, you know, a great passion. It's a huge amount of work, super-fast growth, but I get a lot of pleasure out of it.
18:56You know, 15 hours a week, 20 hours a week, to me, it's a really enjoyable pastime.
19:01Keeps me in reasonable condition, but it's a very good thing. I really like it.
19:06And what's your collaboration process like? Do we need to seek approval from each other before a plant goes in or before it comes out?
19:17You know, we've both got to enjoy it, so we have to, it's important that we both listen to each other's ideas.
19:24So, rarely does something happen without the both of us agreeing, you know, ultimately.
19:29You make it sound so smooth.
19:33Ooh.
19:35No, it's usually.
19:37Well, we have very much the same style.
19:39You know, Mark will have a favourite plant, and I'll have favourite plants, but we sort of combine both quite well, really.
19:46We both like the same things.
19:48Yeah, it's quite easy, really. And two heads are always better than one.
19:51Yes.
19:52For the most part, when you're gardening, you're limited by your conditions.
20:09But what if you could change those conditions and build a little slice of something green that's completely different to the world outside?
20:19Millie's checking out a total undercover Eden.
20:32I'm in Elevated Plains in central Victoria, and here, up on a ridge, there's a remarkable house, farm and garden,
20:41all designed around the owner's passions for food, gardening, design and self-sufficiency.
20:47The 110-metre-long Daylesford Longhouse is home to partners Trace Streeter and Renan Gorin.
20:56Renan's stuck at work today, but Trace, who's the household's main gardener, is here to show me around.
21:03Oh, wow, Trace. Veggies with a view.
21:05Yeah, exactly. You want to have a look at it?
21:07Yes.
21:08Come on.
21:09Trace, you've got a great view here, but I imagine that brings a lot of challenges for gardening.
21:22Yeah, well, originally, you know, because there was no shelter belt there, and we're pretty windy in central Victoria on top of the hill.
21:30So, we did a big shelter belt around here of olives and takasasdee.
21:35So, that's moderated enormously, so now we don't really have any problems with wind for the garden.
21:41They are impressive carrots. You could win a competition with that, I reckon.
21:45Yeah, some of them are pretty good.
21:47I noticed that about a third of the garden is actually planted with perennials.
21:51Yeah, so that's been a new introduction to the garden, just to bring all your birds and pollinators in, and it's been working beautifully.
21:59The increase in small birds in particular has been amazing.
22:09Wow. Every central Victorian gardener's dreamed to have a hothouse.
22:13Yeah, yeah, exactly. In this sort of climate, we really need to sort of start things early.
22:16Yes.
22:17So, otherwise you just don't get it. Tomatoes in particular, you know.
22:21You've got a short season.
22:22A short season.
22:23Yeah.
22:24This allows us to sort of plant really early and start eating tomatoes before Christmas.
22:28Wow.
22:29The big goal is to get a tomato by Christmas, isn't it?
22:31Yes. And melons.
22:32And melons.
22:33And then things like the capsicums, chillies, all those sorts of things can really happen up here,
22:38as long as you've got a polytunnel, but without it...
22:40You're wasting your time.
22:41Yeah.
22:46Trace and Ranen bought the nine hectare block in 2010.
22:51While the productive gardens outside are impressive, it's the unique gardens indoors that are the main event.
22:58Oh, wow.
23:00Wow.
23:02There's plants dripping from everything.
23:04Everywhere you turn.
23:05Oh, I love it.
23:06I love it.
23:07It's burdened as.
23:09Forcund, as Timothy calls it.
23:11It is forcund.
23:13Especially since the bamboo's come into the building, it's turned into a real jungle feeling.
23:17And that's a dwelling up there?
23:19It is.
23:20That's the space that we stay in.
23:22But there's multiple dwellings throughout the whole building.
23:25So, multiple dwellings, kitchen in the middle.
23:27Yeah.
23:28All sorts of areas to spend time in.
23:29Yeah.
23:30But gardens throughout.
23:31And gardens throughout.
23:32Yeah.
23:33To marry it all together.
23:34It's been described as like a village.
23:35Yeah.
23:36Inside a shed.
23:37It is, yes.
23:38That's the way we see it.
23:39It's definitely as a village.
23:40And so, was the garden always going to be part of that?
23:43Definitely.
23:44Yes, absolutely.
23:45The garden was as integral as the architecture itself because both sort of pushed against each other to create the environment.
23:52Windows to the world.
23:53Look at that.
23:54Yeah.
23:55So, the idea when you have a big building like this, you're going to need to make it breathe.
23:58Otherwise, it's too problematic because it's too long to have as a greenhouse as such.
24:02Sure.
24:03These big sliders always breathe.
24:05But if the wind's really strong, I can just take them across and break the wind so you can grow stuff like this in here.
24:15And as you know, you really need air movement with gardens and so that allows air movement within the building.
24:21And I love that even though this isn't a floral garden, the smell of walking into this building, it smells like life.
24:29Yeah.
24:30The fruiting things like the fig in particular really give a, and as it heats up through the day, even more aroma comes from it.
24:36So it becomes really aromatic.
24:37The enormous roof harvest rainwater, but ball water is also used on the indoor gardens in dry times.
24:50And with a working farm on site, nothing goes to waste.
24:54Pruning's become fodder, mulch or compost.
24:58Yeah.
24:59Trace, tell me about this amazing building.
25:02Where did the idea start?
25:04The idea began for the building when Renan and I got together and we wanted to combine our lifestyles successfully as older men.
25:14So it's like, okay, what are our passions?
25:17Renan's passion was cooking.
25:19My passion was self-sufficiency.
25:21And so we sort of brought that together.
25:24We knew we wanted to live here.
25:26It was such a great area.
25:28Dallas was a really gay friendly area.
25:30It felt so different.
25:31It felt so inviting to sort of be in a community like that.
25:40Self-sufficiency for me, when I first started out,
25:43thinking about it was really just growing food and animals,
25:47because animals have always been something that I've been really interested in as well.
25:50Productive animals in particular.
25:52I love the whole thing of going out and the idea of milking a cow.
25:55It just seemed so idyllic to me.
25:57It ticked so many boxes that I thought were important in life.
26:06I can see even in this courtyard productivity is a big part of the planting.
26:11Yeah, it is.
26:13When we started off, we planted our trees throughout.
26:16So, you know, locut, almond, apricot, avocado, etc.
26:20But then as it became more verdant and the greenery got to the roof,
26:24we got a lot more shade.
26:25So I've now been swapping over into more ornamental plantings.
26:29You are managing to fruit an avocado in store, like in central Victoria.
26:34Yeah, yeah.
26:35And almonds inside and various things like that that you wouldn't be able to do outside.
26:39That's right.
26:40Like this is not something that you could ever easily imagine you could grow outdoors in this climate.
26:44No.
26:45And also the size at which they get.
26:46Yes.
26:47Outside they sort of creep slowly up, you know, but in here they just take off.
26:51Everything kind of draws you through, including the garden.
26:54Yeah.
26:55So you have little discoveries all the way through.
26:57That's the idea of it.
26:58It's such a beautiful foliage isn't it?
27:00Isn't it great?
27:01Oh wow, the heart of every village.
27:05Yep.
27:06The kitchen.
27:07The kitchen, absolutely.
27:08This is where we all gather.
27:09And you also run classes here.
27:11Yeah, so it's a cooking school as well, but also our kitchen and living space.
27:15So everything sort of gets used for multiple purposes.
27:25Oh, that's the apricot.
27:26Yeah.
27:27Look at the size of it.
27:28Yeah.
27:29Hits the ceiling every year.
27:30It's humongous.
27:31Yeah.
27:32Does it fruit?
27:33It does fruit heavily.
27:34But I've literally brought out wheelbarrows full of fruit out of this tree.
27:37Amazing.
27:38And given it to the pigs because we just could not process any more.
27:41Tell me you didn't just say you give apricots to pigs.
27:43I love it.
27:44I can see you've got a lot of productivity in here.
27:46Yeah.
27:47And the fujara this year has almost doubled in size.
27:49The finger limes do really well every year.
27:51Wow.
27:52And some lemon sorrel there.
27:53Yum.
27:54The chickens like that.
27:55Do they?
27:56You're feeding the pigs apricots.
27:57Yeah.
27:58You're feeding the chickens sorrel.
27:59And finally we've come to the end of the building.
28:05Wow.
28:06And this is where we're living in here.
28:09It feels quite a bit cooler here.
28:11It is.
28:12I think there's a number of factors.
28:14One I think the bamboo is creating another layer of shade for us that we're not really aware of because of the diffused light element of this whole building.
28:22There was a really nice addition to the building as well was the little stream that we put in because you get sound running through the building.
28:29And it creates this feeling of coolness.
28:31And also it's started to bring frogs in.
28:33And with all the little birds that we have coming into the building, they've got somewhere to go and drink.
28:39Prior to this I really wasn't a gardener.
28:41So this was going to be my big learning curve on how to garden.
28:44And I came at the right time because the internet was just there for you, you know.
28:49So anybody can do just about anything they want to do these days.
28:51And then I had the luxury of being able to make mistakes as I went along.
28:55This is my dirty little secret over here, Millie.
28:58It's a euphorbia, so tough as old nails.
29:00And it likes dry shade.
29:02And so I thought, oh, perfect plant.
29:04And I put it right through the building.
29:06But what I didn't take into account was the other plants around it enough because they really require more water.
29:13So I think the extra moisture has been the problem for these ones.
29:16But in this perfect environment, perfect for growing bamboo, I think it's quite perfect for pests.
29:22Yeah, yeah.
29:23So that's what's happened.
29:24So you're replacing these?
29:25I have replaced them throughout the other part of the building.
29:28This area here I'm going to try and nurture.
29:31And so I think I'm going to just try to maybe just put some pyrethrum or something along those lines on them.
29:36But you're a true gardener because you know that it's probably not going to work, but you're still going to try.
29:40I'm going to give it a go.
29:42One more go.
29:49When I first started here, I was doing hairdressing during the day.
29:52Then I'd come and I'd set up floodlights and I'd garden at night.
29:56And, you know, it literally just needed all those hours to put into it.
30:00But it didn't really matter.
30:02It didn't feel like work.
30:03It just felt like passion.
30:05It felt like indulgence, actually.
30:07That's a better way of describing it.
30:09I felt indulged.
30:10And you can do a lot when you're feeling indulged.
30:12It's true.
30:13It's a great motivator.
30:14It's a great motivator.
30:15Yeah, exactly.
30:16And I can just really get a very zen thing going on as I'm walking around the building.
30:21Yeah, the quiet moments.
30:23When you reflect on the journey then and you reflect on what you had to put into it.
30:27And there's definitely like a pride in that you have worked hard to do it.
30:32That hasn't come easy.
30:33It's every day has been applied to make it happen.
30:36So it's been literally a labour of love.
30:48Still to come on Gardening Australia, Sophie checks out some coastal colour.
30:55Josh finds some Venezuelan flavour.
31:00And we meet a landscape designer living the dream.
31:11Gardening on the coast is no walk in the park.
31:14You're up against the wind, the soil, the salinity.
31:17It's hard graft.
31:19But when you can garden through all of this
31:22and produce something that's full of colour, life and heart,
31:26you've done something great.
31:28Sophie's in Coffin Bay with more.
31:36This is beautiful Coffin Bay,
31:38on the southern end of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula.
31:41It's an area known for pristine beaches, beautiful bushland
31:45and, of course, seafood, especially the oysters.
31:49But what's not so well known
31:52is in Coffin Bay's rocky hillsides
31:55is a garden full of life and whimsy
31:58in spite of incredibly challenging conditions.
32:08This is Fiddlesticks,
32:10created by Helen Bowyer and her husband, Mike.
32:13Wow, what an entrance.
32:15I guess this is a taste of what's to come.
32:17It is a taste of what's to come.
32:19Okay.
32:20Come and have a look.
32:28So, Helen, there's just so much colour.
32:30Yes.
32:31And you've got them mixed in with everything else
32:34from daisies and palygyniums and annuals and poppies.
32:37There's no rhyme or reason to the colour, Sophie.
32:40It's just whatever comes up and whatever flowers will do me.
32:44I just love the colours, all the different colours in the garden.
32:47They're stunning.
32:56So, where did the name Fiddlesticks come from?
32:58Well, I wanted something that was quirky.
33:01I remembered back when I was a little girl,
33:03my mum used to say,
33:04oh, that's Fiddlesticks.
33:05So, I looked it up in the dictionary
33:07and Fiddlesticks means stuff and nonsense
33:10and there's heaps of stuff
33:12and there's heaps of nonsense in this garden.
33:14So, I thought that was just the perfect name for it.
33:17And it's a fun name.
33:18It is.
33:19The garden's random
33:20and I think it's a happy place to be,
33:22so Fiddlesticks is perfect.
33:24And it makes you smile.
33:25I love it.
33:26It does.
33:27Let's go exploring.
33:30Helen's a retired nurse
33:32and Mike's an ex-farmer.
33:33They've lived in Coffin Bay for more than 30 years
33:36and moved to this property
33:38and started the garden a decade ago.
33:41So, Sophie, this is the wine garden.
33:43This is my favourite place in the garden.
33:46It's beautiful.
33:48Yes.
33:49Stepping down into this sunken little oasis.
33:51Yes, it is gorgeous.
33:53So, there's lots of wine drunk down here.
34:00So, it's good times.
34:03Yeah, it's a good spot.
34:04I bet.
34:05How do you work out what plants, you know, thrive
34:08and what ones don't?
34:09Well, it's a bit of trial and error.
34:11I do a lot of cuttings myself.
34:13So, that's pelargonium, salvia.
34:15So, I use a lot of those.
34:17But in here, I wanted to build it up
34:19so that there was a bit of protection from the sun.
34:21So, I put the hibiscus in behind us
34:24and we've got the gabion wall.
34:26So, it's quite enclosed now.
34:28I can hide out here and Mike has no idea where I am.
34:31So, tell me how the garden came about.
34:43Because you've been here for 10 years.
34:46Where did you start?
34:48Well, Sophie, I started in the top corner.
34:51For the first time in my married life, I didn't have a garden
34:54and it was a pretty stressful time in our life
34:58and I really struggled without a garden.
35:02And I must admit, I did get a bit down in the dumps about it
35:06and Mike suggested that I start up here in the top corner
35:10of this land that we own.
35:12There was absolutely nothing here.
35:14No water.
35:15Lots of kangaroos, emus, rabbits, weeds and the limestone.
35:21Lots of limestone everywhere.
35:23So, Helen's decided she wants a new plant here
35:27near the water wall entrance.
35:28And this is typical of what it's like to plant a new plant.
35:32So, you can use a crowbar, but it's not very effective
35:36because we've got about only 50mm of soil
35:39until you hit the limestone layer.
35:42And then my good old mate Jack comes along and makes it easier.
35:50So, even with a jackhammer, it can take sometimes an hour
35:53to dig a hole 300 to 400 feet.
35:56Welcome to Coffin Bay soil.
36:03Time to plant this little geranium.
36:07There's some tuna compost in this soil.
36:12We'll pop the plant in here, loosen the roots off a little bit.
36:20Look at that.
36:21Looks pretty good.
36:22So, now we've got to give this a decent water
36:25and it might grow.
36:27So, you can see that's how to plant a plant in Coffin Bay
36:31is pretty harsh conditions here
36:32and we have to do that for every plant, basically, that we plant here.
36:37That is huge.
36:38It is huge, but we have done the worst of it.
36:42It's amazing when you see everything that's growing.
36:47But as well as the stones, it's hot, it's dry, it's windy
36:52and the soil was awful.
36:55So, I've had to build up the soil as well.
36:57Yeah, you know, for just a small hole, you end up with a wheelbarrow full of stones.
37:01But, you know, it's like what you put in is what you get back.
37:04So, you appreciate every hole that you've dug, that there's something growing there
37:08and you think, well, well, it's pretty good.
37:10Yes, and we've had to do something with the stones.
37:12You can't just put them out for the rubbish truck to pick up.
37:15We've lined the garden paths, we've done gabion walls, we've done sculptures.
37:20We've just had to use the rocks.
37:22We've had to work with them.
37:26So, how do you describe this part of the garden?
37:29Well, this is the really dry area.
37:31We don't water here as much.
37:34It's a lot harsher.
37:36There's a lot of rock just on the surface.
37:43I love this sign.
37:45The point of a maze is to find its centre.
37:48The point of a labyrinth is to find your centre.
37:51Let's go and find our centre.
37:53Also, over this side, we have the great wall of Coffin Bay,
38:01which is made out of planks from the Coffin Bay Yacht Club jetty
38:06when it was demolished.
38:09Also, there's the veggie patch and the chook house.
38:16The property adjoins the stunning Coffin Bay National Park
38:20on the southern side and includes an area of native bushland.
38:26In dry seasons, there's an influx of wildlife from the National Park
38:30seeking food and water.
38:33Luckily, we've got our boar.
38:34That has helped.
38:35But we try to plant things that aren't going to use too much water,
38:39like natives and more of the Mediterranean-type plants.
38:45And how is the garden laid out?
38:47Oh, there's...
38:49There is no plan.
38:50It evolves.
38:51There's no plan.
38:52It's evolution.
38:53It was where the rocks led us.
38:55It's a very quirky garden, but everything that we've made,
38:59we've used recycled materials or gear that we've picked up from the dump.
39:05Who creates the sculptures?
39:06Well, Mike does that.
39:08He's done what he calls the microsphere.
39:11That's been done with my dad's old tools and some coloured bottles.
39:16And then some friends donated a hand basin and a toilet.
39:20So we've potted it up as an outside dunny.
39:24Well, the mosaicing adds nice colour as well.
39:27It does.
39:28All year round.
39:29Yeah.
39:30Even when the flower's not flowering, you've still got colour with the mosaics.
39:32So that's great.
39:33Yeah.
39:34Helen's always said when you're walking along the path, every time you turn a corner,
39:38there should be something different that you see that's, you know, whether it's a plant
39:43or, you know, something we've built or just a different angle on it.
39:47It's very calming and it's great for our mental health.
39:50We feel pretty proud that we have created this from virtually nothing.
39:54Yeah.
39:55So it's, yeah, it's a good feeling.
39:57Yeah.
39:58You're a good team, I think.
39:59Well, we are.
40:00And it's good to talk about what we could do and then work out, get a bit carried away
40:05about what we can do.
40:07And then you sort of bring it back, tone it down a little bit and...
40:13Or tone it up.
40:17But yeah, it works well.
40:19We work well together.
40:32Mmm.
40:34They are nice, aren't they?
40:35They are.
40:36Cheers.
40:37Cheers.
40:38Thanks for coming, Sophie.
40:39Thank you for having me.
40:40Thank you guys for the opening one.
40:50Great gardens don't all have to be large.
40:53Small spaces can be just as inspiring when cleverly designed and planted.
40:59Josh has found a fantastic example in Bicton, with a surprising South American flavour.
41:07For most of us, the connection to where we were born transcends distance and time.
41:21Photos, music and food all take us back to our origins.
41:26But gardeners, well, a gardener is going to garden.
41:33Gardening is things that give me peace.
41:36It's a place, how can I remember South America?
41:40Yeah.
41:41Hi, Daniel.
41:42Yeah, yes.
41:43How are you?
41:44Oh, good.
41:45What a beautiful verge.
41:47Daniel Antonio McLean is a garden designer and landscaper by trade, and Venezuelan by heart,
41:53who began building his patch of jungle near East Fremantle back in 2016.
41:59What was the garden like when you first started?
42:02Well, before it was just lawn.
42:04And I have in mind to do mixes of native plants and succulents,
42:10and then I decided to remove all the lawn.
42:12And then from there I start to put a plant, the grasses, all the native,
42:17and then I started also to make the path in here.
42:21Yes, and then everything goes step by step.
42:24And then I got so inspired to do it.
42:32You've really made the most of this front courtyard too, Daniel.
42:35What crops are you growing in here?
42:36Well, I grow in a silver bit.
42:38I grow in my coriander.
42:40So many herbs are using for cooking.
42:42And for me this is how I can save money in here.
42:45And you get plenty of sun here?
42:46Yeah, plenty sun.
42:47Yeah, plenty, plenty sun.
42:49And I just really peel it by seed in here.
42:52I want to level it to grow a little bit more higher
42:54and make it a little bit more shade to this area there
42:57because there's a lot of sun in this area here.
42:59Yeah.
43:00And also something very important I have in there.
43:03You see the tree in there?
43:04This is my custard apple that I wait in one day having fruit from there.
43:08A productive veggie patch.
43:14A standout verge garden.
43:16So far, so good.
43:18But the best of it is tucked away out the back.
43:25Wow!
43:26Isn't this special?
43:28What inspired you to create this garden?
43:33First of all, because it's a place that I can meditate every morning.
43:39When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I can see is all green.
43:44And green means for me life.
43:47And why has it been important to create that connection back to Venezuela?
43:52It's because when I was a kid, I used to go to the Binocle River with my dad fishing.
43:59And then this always just remind me the bush, the jungle.
44:05And I remember all this beauty that I miss from tropical plants in Venezuela.
44:10Can you share a little bit about your journey from Venezuela to Perth?
44:15That's happened in 1997.
44:17I left my kids in Colombia with the care of the Santa Teresa Jesus Child nuns.
44:24And I came into Australia to get a protection visa.
44:27I never tried going to see my kids again.
44:30But it was something that I had to do for them for the future.
44:35And I said my kids were going to Pyrenees again.
44:39And that happened.
44:40My kids, they come in six months after.
44:43And then I decided to get involved in gardening.
44:46It's nice bananas.
44:47And did you do all the landscaping yourself?
44:52And if so, where did you learn how to do that?
44:54First of all, I went to TAFE.
44:55I did horticulture, aquatic plants.
44:58I learned the basic things first about how transforming this soil in good soil for tropical plants.
45:07When I was a kid, always I liked making little waterfalls.
45:12And this gave me just the idea.
45:15Combination of tropicals and the logs, all the bromelais, all the plants.
45:22How important has this garden been for your health and wellbeing?
45:26A garden for me is like a medicine.
45:29I had a post-traumatic stress disorder from my past.
45:33And I found out that getting involved in gardening, in plants, take care of the plant, put music to the plant, water in the plants, this gave me so peace and relaxing.
45:46This gave me purpose.
45:48Each plant needs something, attention.
45:51You get motivation for what you're doing and you are happy.
45:55And every day is happiness for me.
45:57What was this area like before you started?
45:59Well, before it was just all bricks, especially in summer, that's really hot.
46:04What I did was, was removing all the bricks and also make the design for tropicals.
46:10It's very important to have shade, humidity.
46:14Soon I put the ponds, the water, I got the humidity and I start to introduce all the new plants, new tropicals, all coming all together.
46:25I really like the bromelais.
46:28Also, I like the top iris.
46:31They're considered long one day.
46:33Why is it important for you to share what you've done here with your garden?
46:36I want to inspire people.
46:37The garden can give you so much love, so much pleasure.
46:42I want to tell the people that you can get so much benefits for gardening.
46:48This garden is Daniel, Daniel McLean.
46:50This is me.
46:51A person who likes to have peace.
46:54And it is a space to see that I create this and I can share with people.
46:59That is the meaning that is everything to me.
47:02Have you ever dreamed of moving to the country and letting this gardening thing off the leash?
47:19Well, our next story is with a horticulturist and landscape designer who's created a stunning country garden.
47:28It's full of colour and intriguing plant choices.
47:32And the results are the stuff that gardening dreams are made of.
47:49My garden is the most important thing in my life.
47:53It's like breathing really.
47:55It is my love and my passion.
47:58Don't tell Mr Treer.
48:00But no, he's my love and passion too.
48:04But it is, yes.
48:06My name is Peter Treer.
48:17I'm a landscape designer, a passionate gardener and a horticulturist.
48:26Woodgreen is heaven.
48:28Woodgreen garden is in the centre of a property where we run cattle.
48:37Woodgreen is a mix of beautiful old trees.
48:41Garden beds that hold most interesting perennials, little bulbs.
48:48It's a place that I feel at home and where I work really.
48:54It's every day.
48:57I know every plant in this garden intimately.
49:01I really do.
49:02And it's important to visit them regularly.
49:06Here is a really beautiful plant, commonly called the Apostle Plant.
49:12And I'll tell you why.
49:14Because it won't flower until the clump gets 12 leaves.
49:19And then it will start flowering.
49:21Botanical name, Neomerica cerulea, from South America.
49:26Now, I'm really fortunate here in Bilpin that I can grow a wide range of plants
49:32because we've got deep, rich, black volcanic soil.
49:36But I can't really succeed with natives that come from sandstone country.
49:41But this one from South America does beautifully.
49:57Having four seasons is helpful because it gives me a range of plants I can grow.
50:04And so there's always something happening.
50:06It's like an orchestra.
50:08And that's why I love the Blue Mountains.
50:12But in summer, our garden is full of colour.
50:16The hydrangeas are wonderful.
50:19Dahlias, lilies.
50:21I love my roses.
50:23And I like to collect the older ones, the heritage roses.
50:27And so that's summer.
50:29Autumn in the mountains, look, you don't have to do anything.
50:32It does it for you.
50:33When we planted our trees, we did select a lot of deciduous trees that would give us that lovely, rich colour.
50:43Winter is the time when the treasures come out.
50:47I'm crazy about galanthus or snowdrops.
50:50And I've become a galanthophile, which is a disease.
50:54And it's incurable.
50:56I've been collecting them.
50:58Spring is another season that it just does its own thing.
51:03The blossom, the rhododendrons are fabulous here in the spring.
51:11Tasmania is always in my heart.
51:14My family were great gardeners.
51:17I love gardens, but I never did it.
51:20And I left home when I was about 21.
51:23So when I came to Sydney, it was a bit of a shock.
51:26I'd never seen a hibiscus in my life before.
51:28So I learnt to grow things.
51:31I made mistakes in my Sydney gardens from a little flat to a semi to a house.
51:37But I wanted more.
51:39And I wanted to get those four seasons.
51:42I wanted space.
51:43I was greedy.
51:47And so Peter and I, my husband and I, got to a point where we wanted to move.
51:52To the country.
51:54Never thought of Bilpin.
51:56But we were shown this very property.
52:02I didn't even want to look at the house inside.
52:05I just want to look at the garden.
52:06And we just fell in love with it.
52:08Now, it was a working property.
52:11But we started planting trees.
52:13We knew that trees were very important.
52:18I probably started with small garden beds.
52:21So I would finish a garden.
52:23And then when we had time, we'd start another one.
52:27It's not a formal garden.
52:30I would describe it as informal.
52:32Trying to use colour and texture in foliage is very important too.
52:36And to get the different layers.
52:38And I love curves.
52:40I'm really not heavily into straight lines.
52:42I'm a curvy, curvy lover.
52:45I think it's also very important to try and use things like water in a garden.
52:50Now, water can be a bird bath.
52:52Or it can be, I have got a large-ish pond.
52:55And if I win the lottery, I'm going to put in a big, big reflective pond just over the stone wall.
53:03But that's if I win the lottery.
53:04I like to be able to make parts that will be vistas, where I can frame the view through.
53:14And as you can see, this tree here, the liquid amber, provides a beautiful ceiling.
53:20And then you've got colours behind.
53:22You've got pinks.
53:23You've got different foliage.
53:25I think contrast is wonderful.
53:28And I love the idea of a vista.
53:30If I can achieve this in several parts in my garden, I'm very happy.
53:36Being a collector of rare and unusual plants is totally important to me.
53:42And I think when I first came here and I was able to collect plants, I was very protective of them.
53:49That was mine.
53:50And I wasn't willing to share.
53:52I bought a lot of stuff from little specialist nurseries.
53:57And I still do.
53:58I still love collecting.
54:00But I'm much better now at sharing something with a friend in case you lose it.
54:07Because I've certainly learnt that by a bad experience, actually.
54:12We're not allowed now to just bring things into Australia willy-nilly.
54:17A very well-known nurseryman said to me once that what is in Australia,
54:21and I'm talking about exotic things, and natives too, is like gold.
54:25So we must, you know, look after what we have.
54:30This is only very tiny.
54:33It's an Oreganum dictamnus, or Dittany of Crete.
54:40Very, very rare.
54:41Only grows on the island of Crete and on cliffs, sheer cliffs.
54:46And the young men of Crete will try and climb the cliffs to pick it, to give to their lady friends,
54:54because it's an aphrodisiac.
54:56And many of these gentlemen lose their lives too.
54:58Very, very rare.
55:03Here is an Anasodontia el-rayo.
55:07A shrub from South Africa, and an absolute bee magnet.
55:13The bees love it, and it's so important to have bees in the garden.
55:17Here we have, I think, a beautiful little short-lived perennial,
55:23and it self-seeds itself around the garden.
55:26It's called a tweedia.
55:27That blue is really quite something.
55:30And they just pop up, but you won't find them in nurseries,
55:34and this is why it's special to me.
55:36But just look at this.
55:38Look at the seed.
55:40And it's often quite the prettiest part of the plant.
55:44So I don't mind when things like this pop up in the garden and self-seed.
55:48A very unusual and rare plant.
55:53My garden is what I love and what I've developed,
55:58and it's grown with me.
56:03But it is heaven.
56:05If I die, I want to come here.
56:07I don't want to go anywhere else.
56:22Now, if you're a Gardening Australia tragic,
56:24you're not going to want to miss next week's show.
56:27I can promise tears and laughter, a big announcement,
56:31and some precious memories.
56:33So don't miss it.
56:34I'll see you then.
56:37We're visiting the Australian Drylands Garden.
56:41And we're highlighting plants that will flourish in hot and dry conditions.
56:46I'm visiting a beautiful, sprawling garden in the Dandenongs.
56:51It was designed by famed Edna Walling in the 1940s,
56:55and now it's being lovingly restored back to its former glory.
57:00And we've got a big announcement from a gardening icon.
57:05Hello.
57:06And I love you here.
57:07Today's invasion of New bowel movements at the Would-Grid� geetcap.
57:12Thank you very much.
57:14Still here on the outside family,
57:15to Barnes and Paul,
57:24what's most appreciate everybody?
57:26We got the good news and will be here.
57:28Today's welcome as everyone!
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