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Gardening Australia 2025 Episode 39
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00:34Hello and welcome to Gardening Australia.
00:36I'm on Wurundjeri Country, checking out the stunning Chelsea Australia garden at Elinda in the Dandenong Ranges.
00:45And it's the perfect place to be, because this week we're celebrating Australia's great gardens.
00:53I'm talking about those gardens that take a big swing and knock it out of the park.
00:59The 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.
01:06Here's all the other greatness we've got coming your way.
01:11A 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.
01:38Join me in South Australia's beautiful Eyre Peninsula as I tour a coastal garden full of colour and whimsy.
01:46We 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.
01:55My garden is the most important thing in my life.
01:59It's like breathing really.
02:01Dense, delicate, spiky, soft, ancient, colourful and dramatic.
02:30I love everything about the plants of the Australian bush.
02:35And I'm visiting a new public garden designed by someone who obviously feels the same way.
02:42They're from our country.
02:44It connects me to this amazing place and I just want to see them everywhere.
02:49I'm in the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden where the relatively new Chelsea Australian garden
02:57is already looking well and truly established.
03:02This is Phil Johnson's upsized adaptation of a garden he and his team designed and built
03:10for England's famous Chelsea Flower Show back in 2013 when he and his team won gold and best in show.
03:19A 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 the best of my baby.
03:33Well, 12 years ago we won gold and best in show with 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,
03:55the new one can afford to stretch out a little more.
03:59Built on what was once part of the Olinda golf course, the garden spreads over a much more generous 6,000 square metres
04:08and even gets a bit of borrowed vertical real estate from the region's iconic mountain ash.
04:16And 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 100 threatened and endangered species in this garden
04:38as a collection, which is pretty humbling and pretty devastating to actually realise that.
04:44But I think it's a wonderful natural encyclopaedia 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 blue theminder,
05:19which is just such a beautiful plant.
05:21These transitional wet and boggy areas for our Swamp Banks years.
05:25Another favourite one is my me boldina.
05:28But hey, you must love the quailops, they're looking fantastic, aren't they?
05:31Look at the colour, the lime green drifting into the pinky red, it's spectacular.
05:36Extraordinary plant.
05:38Tell me a little bit about the layout and the design choices that you made.
05:46So really, I wanted garden beds that had good depth.
05:49So we could create layers and layers of planting from 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, we haven't just got one, we've got big ones right down to the little juvenile little baby ones.
06:10So plant a couple together, they look great.
06:12And then look at this view line we've got, this focal point looking straight down to the Waratah sculpture that was designed by Dylan Brady.
06:19Tell us about the build.
06:23Let's think about the worst weather you could possibly build anything in.
06:26On top of the mountain in red soil, that's what we built in.
06:29It was full on.
06:30Mud, mud, mud, more mud.
06:32We're building on a slope, we're building on a substantial level change.
06:36We had to make it wheelchair accessible, so that was our number one driver.
06:40Then 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 billet bone 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 conservationist, passionate about conservation and the importance of connection to nature is really the soul is the billet bone.
07:14The billet bone 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? My 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.
08:22Balmy 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.
08:32Has a beautiful flower spike as well.
08:35And it's a great habitat again.
08:37The 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, which creates a microclimate for the spectacular tree ferns to shelter from the sun.
09:00Phil's design style celebrates light, texture, contrast and spatial harmony.
09:14All informed by the way he perceives the world.
09:20Actually, I'm colour blind.
09:21Did you know that?
09:22No.
09:23I never told anyone until, like, a few years ago.
09:25When someone says, see the red flower over there.
09:28Where?
09:29I can see the foliage and the structure, but I can't see the redness against the green.
09:34And then purples and blues and mauves, pinks and reds, and, yeah, there's a bit going on in there.
09:42But what an incredible thing.
09:43As a landscape designer, most people are thinking, oh, plants, flowers, colour, colour, colour.
09:49Yet you've got this different angle.
09:51I think it allows me to see things in a different light, different textures.
09:55Yeah, that reminds me, my dad was an incredible photographer and he did it in black and white.
10:01And he saw light.
10:02It works really well.
10:06But over in London, after I won the Chelsea Flower Show, I started telling people that I was colour blind after that.
10:11And I encourage everyone to be proud of being colour blind.
10:13I'll tell you that.
10:14You've dedicated a large chunk of your life since the success of Chelsea to getting this garden up and going here.
10:26What is it that you want people to take away from this effort and this space?
10:33Not 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.
10:45What is it about the connection to plants that you want people to feel like you do?
10:53To 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 and actually then going and buying that plant.
11:16I've done my job.
11:17That's amazing.
11:18That's them getting on board with this little revolution that we need in this country to connect people back to nature.
11:26If you've been waiting for a moment to grab a cup of tea, now is not that moment.
11:42It's not every day we travel to tropical Cairns, but when we do, we go straight to the top.
11:49You're about to see one of the warmest, luscious, greenest, greatest gardens of the year.
11:56So sit back and enjoy.
11:59Without that cuppa.
12:10I'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.
12:19And there are tropical plants in rounded beds spilling out onto the street.
12:28Gardening in the tropics is not for the faint-hearted.
12:31This garden gets over two metres of rain each year.
12:35And in winter, the average top temperature is still 24 degrees.
12:39Just 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.
12:56Well, 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.
13:15Even though it's not rainforest, it's actually a collection of plants.
13:19And it's got beautiful winding paths and it's just very lush.
13:24It'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.
13:40With the large round fans of Likawala Grandis, a reliable standout.
13:45So I can see a lot of work has gone into this garden.
13:48It's all terraced and it's well planted.
13:50What did you first do?
13:52I did a massive amount of earthwork.
13:55You know, we needed a little bit of a level area.
13:58So we flattened things out.
14:00We created a pool area.
14:02Most of what you see here now was created.
14:06The defined areas were probably representative of particular plant varieties.
14:12Some that required sunny areas.
14:14Some 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.
14:31And they approach the garden as a combined creative force.
14:35So Mark, you're the gardener and with your design skills.
14:39How do you find that complements each other?
14:41Well, I probably bring the horticultural expertise.
14:44Being a plant lover and collector.
14:47I just bring in the principles of design.
14:51Using balance.
14:54The texture, colour.
14:56Particularly say colour, you would use a bright colour in a shaded area.
15:00So that you've got a focal point.
15:02Bright 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 so that they form a cohesive, interesting look to it.
15:27As you would do dressing up a lounge room.
15:30You put pictures on the walls and you put the flowers over here and you create your vistas and your focal points.
15:36And we do it with plans.
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.
15:50Lovely paths to wander through.
15:52And with a vista at the end usually.
15:55Which will draw your eye into the area.
15:58So we sort of like to create areas that you want to go to.
16:02So 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.
16:22Just like draped and cascading down the stairs.
16:26They do.
16:27They form a lot of visual interest, I think, filling in all the gaps, I guess.
16:30And that's what mass planting does.
16:31It's filling in gaps, isn't it?
16:33Yeah.
16:34And do you typically choose plants?
16:35I mean, what's your process?
16:37Well, a plant that has to grow together well in a group is always going to work.
16:43It's usually got some very interesting leaf form.
16:46So that creates a lot of visual impact.
16:49It's got to be an interesting looking little ground cover, really.
17:02So your garden is on quite a steep slope.
17:05How 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.
17:15And 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.
17:32A lot of leaching with so much rain.
17:34So lots of dolomite.
17:36I would fertilise four to five times a year.
17:39That's quite a process then to feed multiple times a year.
17:43Yeah, you have to do it.
17:45You know, you've got such rapid rates of growth for some of the plants that nutrient uptake is like nowhere else.
17:53So 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.
18:03It's a pretty powerful toolkit.
18:05I need tools that are really going to work strongly on very fast growing lush plants.
18:13Things like machetes, ginger knives.
18:17I've got a special banana shovel which gets down deep into these big fleshy banana roots.
18:23You know, plants like heliconias, which are super fast growing, really need to be pruned, you know, sometimes four times a year.
18:30Wow.
18:31With 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.
18:42So gardening in the tropics sounds incredibly challenging.
18:46Is it worth it?
18:47It is.
18:48I love it.
18:49It's a, you know, a great passion.
18:51It'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.
18:58To me, it's a really enjoyable pastime, keeps me in reasonable condition, but it's a very good thing.
19:05I really like it.
19:06And what's your collaboration process like?
19:12Do we need to seek approval from each other before a plant goes in or before it comes out?
19:16You know, we both got to enjoy it.
19:18So we have to, it's important that we both listen to each other's ideas.
19:23And so rarely does something happen without the both of us agreeing, you know, ultimately.
19:30You make it sound so smooth.
19:32Ooh.
19:33No, it usually is.
19:36Well, we have very much the same style.
19:38You know, Mark will have a favourite plants and I'll have favourite plants, but we sort of combine both quite well, really.
19:45We both like the same things.
19:47Yeah.
19:48Yeah.
19:49It's quite, quite easy, really.
19:50And 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?
20:20Millie's checking out a total undercover Eden.
20:24I'm in Elevated Plains in central Victoria.
20:36And here, up on a ridge, there's a remarkable house, farm and garden, all designed around the owner's passions for food, gardening, design and self-sufficiency.
20:49The 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.
21:02Oh, wow, Trace. Veggies with a view.
21:04Yeah, exactly.
21:05You want to have a look at it?
21:06Yes.
21:07Come on.
21:08Trace, you've got a great view here, but I imagine that brings a lot of challenges for gardening.
21:23Yeah, 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 takasasti.
21:35So, that's moderated enormously. So, now we don't really have any problems with wind for the garden.
21:40They are impressive carrots. Thank you.
21:42You could win a competition with that, I reckon.
21:44Yeah, 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.
21:57And it's been working beautifully. The increase in small birds in particular has been amazing.
22:09Wow. Every central Victorian gardener's dream to have a hothouse.
22:12Yeah, yeah, exactly. In this sort of climate, we really need to sort of start things early.
22:17Yes.
22:18Otherwise, you just don't get it. Tomatoes in particular, you know.
22:21You've got a short season.
22:22Short 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.
22:42Trace 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.
22:59Wow.
23:00There's plants dripping from everything.
23:04Everything.
23:05Everywhere you turn.
23:06Oh, I love it.
23:07It's verdant as.
23:08Forcund, 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.
23:25Yeah.
23:26So multiple dwellings, kitchen in the middle.
23:27Yeah.
23:28All sorts of areas to spend time in.
23:30Yeah.
23:31But gardens throughout.
23:32And gardens throughout.
23:33Yeah.
23:34To marry it all together.
23:35It's like a village.
23:36Yeah.
23:37Inside a shed.
23:38It is.
23:39Yes.
23:40That's the way we see it.
23:41It's definitely as a village.
23:42And so was the garden always going to be part of that?
23:44Definitely.
23:45Yes.
23:46Absolutely.
23:47The garden was as integral as the architecture itself because both sort of pushed against
23:50each other to create the environment.
23:52Windows to the world.
23:53Look at that.
23:54That's.
23:55Yeah.
23:56So 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
24:02as such.
24:03And these big sliders always breathe.
24:05But if the wind's really strong, I can just take them across and break the wind.
24:09So you can grow stuff like this in here.
24:15And as you know, you really need air movement with gardens.
24:18And 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
24:26building, it smells like life.
24:28Yeah.
24:29The fruiting things like the fig in particular.
24:31Yes.
24:32It's really giver.
24:33And as it heats up through the day, even more aroma comes from it.
24:36So it becomes really aromatic.
24:39The enormous roof harvest rainwater.
24:45But 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.
24:57Trace, tell me about this amazing building.
25:02Where did the idea start?
25:03The idea began for the building when Renan and I got together and we wanted to combine
25:11our 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.
25:35Hello, girls.
25:36Come on.
25:37Self-sufficiency for me when I first started out thinking about it was really just growing
25:46food and animals.
25:47Because animals have always been something that I've been really interested in as well.
25:50Productive animals in particular.
25:51I 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.
26:00I can see even in this courtyard, productivity is a big part of the planting.
26:11It is.
26:12When we started off, we planted our trees throughout, so, you know, locut, almond, apricot, you know, avocado, etc.
26:20But then as it became more verdant and the greenery got to the roof, we 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 indoor, like in central Victoria.
26:34Yeah, yeah, and 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.
26:44And 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.
26:52Everything kind of draws you through, including the garden.
26:55Yeah, so 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?
27:03Oh, wow.
27:03The heart of every village.
27:05Yep.
27:05The kitchen.
27:06The kitchen.
27:07Yes, 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.
27:17Oh, 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.
27:46And 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 love that.
27:56Do they?
27:56They're feeding the pigs, aren't they?
27:57Yeah.
27:58They're feeding the chickens sorrel.
28:02And finally, we've come to the end of the building.
28:06Wow.
28:07And 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
28:18aware 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
28:27because you get sound running through the building and it creates this feeling of coolness.
28:32And also it's started to bring frogs in.
28:34And with all the little birds that we have coming into the building, they've got somewhere
28:37to go and drink.
28:38Prior 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.
29:03And so I thought, oh, perfect plant.
29:04And I'll put it right through the building.
29:05But what I didn't take into account was the other plants around it enough because they
29:11really 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
29:21for pests.
29:22Yeah.
29:23Yeah.
29:23So that's what's happened.
29:24So you're replacing these?
29:26I have replaced them throughout the other part of the building.
29:28This area here, I'm going to try and nurture.
29:30And so I think I'm going to just try to maybe just put some pyrethrum or something along those
29:36lines on them.
29:36You're a true gardener because you know that it's probably not going to work, but you're
29:40still going to try.
29:41I'm going to give it a go.
29:41One more go.
29:48When 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.
30:08That'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.
30:17And I can just really get a very zen thing going on as I'm walking around the building.
30:21Yeah.
30:22The quiet moments.
30:23When you reflect on the journey then and you reflect on what you had to put into it.
30:28And there's definitely like a pride in that you have worked hard to do it.
30:32It 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, Josh finds
30:56some Venezuelan flavour, and we meet a landscape designer living the dream.
31:10Gardening 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 and produce something that's full of colour,
31:25life and heart, you've done something great.
31:29Sophie's in Coffin Bay with more.
31:36This is beautiful Coffin Bay on the southern end of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula.
31:42It's an area known for pristine beaches, beautiful bushland and of course, seafood,
31:47especially the oysters.
31:50But what's not so well known is in Coffin Bay's rocky hillsides,
31:55is a garden full of life and whimsy, in spite of incredibly challenging conditions.
32:07This is Fiddlesticks, created 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.
32:18Okay.
32:19Come and have a look.
32:20Coming.
32:27So Helen, there's just so much colour.
32:30Yes.
32:31And you've got them mixed in with everything else from daisies and pelargoniums and annuals
32:36and 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 remember back when I was a little girl, my mum used to say,
33:04oh, that's Fiddlesticks.
33:06So I looked it up in the dictionary and Fiddlesticks means stuff and nonsense.
33:11And there's heaps of stuff and there's heaps of nonsense in this garden.
33:15So I thought that was just the perfect name for it.
33:18And it's a fun name.
33:19It is.
33:20The garden's random and I think it's a happy place to be.
33:23So Fiddlesticks is perfect.
33:25And it makes you smile.
33:26I love it.
33:26It does.
33:27Let's go exploring.
33:30Helen's a retired nurse and Mike's an ex-farmer.
33:33They've lived in Coffin Bay for more than 30 years
33:36and moved to this property and started the garden a decade ago.
33:41So, Sophie, this is the wine garden.
33:44This 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.
33:57So there's lots of wine drunk down here.
34:01So it's good times.
34:03Yeah.
34:03It's a good spot.
34:04I bet.
34:05How do you work out what plants, you know, thrive and 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 so that there was a bit of protection from the sun.
34:21So I put the hibiscus in behind us and 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 because you've been here for 10 years.
34:46Where did you start?
34:47Well, Sophie, I started in the top corner.
34:51For the first time in my married life, I didn't have a garden and it was a pretty stressful time in our life.
34:59And I really struggled without a garden and I must admit, I did get a bit down in the dumps about it.
35:07And Mike suggested that I start up here in the top corner of this land that we owned.
35:12There was absolutely nothing here, no water, lots of kangaroos, emus, rabbits, weeds and the limestone.
35:21Lots of limestone everywhere.
35:24So Helen's decided she wants a new plant here near the water wall entrance.
35:29And 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 because we've got about only 50 ml of soil until you hit the limestone layer.
35:43And then my good old mate Jack comes along and makes it easier.
35:50So even with a jackhammer, it can take sometimes an hour to dig a hole 300 to 400 deep.
35:56Welcome to Coffin Bay soil.
36:04Time to plant this little geranium.
36:08There's some tuna cop off from 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.
36:23So now we've got to give this a decent water and it might grow.
36:27So you can see that's how to plant a plant in Coffin Bay is 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.
36:54So I've had to build up the soil as well.
36:57Yeah.
36:57You know, for just a small hole, you end up with a wheelbarrow full of stones.
37:00But, 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.
37:10And 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.
37:18We've done gabion walls.
37:19We've done sculptures.
37:20We've just had to use the rocks.
37:22We've had to work with them.
37:23So how do you describe this part of the garden?
37:29Well, this is the really dry area.
37:32We 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.
37:52Let's go and find our centre.
37:54Also, over this side, we have the great wall of Coffin Bay,
38:02which 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
38:21and includes an area of native bushland.
38:25In dry seasons, there's an influx of wildlife from the National Park
38:30seeking food and water.
38:32Luckily, 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...
38:48There is no plan.
38:49There's no plan.
38:50It evolves.
38:51It's evolution.
38:52It was where the rocks let us.
38:54It'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.
39:03Who creates the sculptures?
39:06Well, Mike does that.
39:08He's done the...
39:09What 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.
39:25Well, the mosaicing adds nice colour as well.
39:28It does.
39:28All year round.
39:29Yeah.
39:29And when the flower's not flowering, you've still got colour with the mosaics,
39:32so that's great.
39:33Yeah.
39:33Yeah.
39:34Helen's always said when you're walking along the path,
39:37every time you turn a corner, there should be something different that you see
39:40that's, you know, whether it's a plant or, you know,
39:44something 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.
39:54So 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,
40:04get a bit carried away about what we can do.
40:07And then you sort of bring it back, tone it down a little bit and...
40:12Or tone it up.
40:17But, yeah, it works well.
40:18We work well together.
40:24Mmm.
40:33Tartan oil, shouldn't they?
40:35They are.
40:36Cheers.
40:37Cheers.
40:37Thanks for coming, Sophie.
40:38Yes.
40:39Thank you for having me.
40:40Great 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
41:03with a surprising South American flavour.
41:14For 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.
41:25But 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?
41:41Hi, Daniel.
41:42Hey, yes.
41:43How are you?
41:44Oh, good.
41:45What a beautiful verge.
41:46Daniel Antonio McLean is a garden designer and landscaper by trade
41:51and 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 had 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 started 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.
42:39So 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?
42:47Yeah, plenty of sun.
42:48Yeah, plenty, plenty of sun.
42:49And I just really feel 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.
43:00Yeah.
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, a standout verge garden, so far so good.
43:18But the best of it is tucked away out the back.
43:21What 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 that 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,
43:54I used to go to the Pinocchio River with my dad fishing.
43:59And then this always just remind me the bush, the jungle.
44:04It doesn't remember me.
44:06All this beauty that I miss from tropical plants from Venezuela.
44:10Can you share a little bit about your journey from Venezuela to Perth?
44:14That's happened in 1997.
44:18I left my kids in Colombia with the care of the Santa Teresa Jesus Child nuns.
44:24And I come into Australia to get a protection visa.
44:28I never thought I was going to see my kids again.
44:30But it was something that I had to do for them for the future.
44:35And I say, my kids, we're going to donate again.
44:39And that happened.
44:41My kids, they come in six months after.
44:43And then I decided to get involved in gardening.
44:47It's nice bananas.
44:50And 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.
44:56I did horticulture, aquatic plants.
44:59I learned the basic things first about how transforming this soil.
45:05In good soil for tropical plants.
45:08When 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.
45:19All the bromelais, all the plants.
45:22How important has this garden been for your health and well-being?
45:26A garden for me is like medicine.
45:29I had a post-traumatic stress disorder from my past.
45:32And I found out that getting involved in gardening and plants, take care of the plant, put music to the plant, water on the plants.
45:43This gave me so peace and relaxing.
45:46This gave me purpose.
45:48Each plant needs something, attention.
45:52You get motivated for what you're doing.
45:53And you're happy.
45:55And every day is happiness for me.
45:57What was this area like before you started?
46:00Well, before it was just all bricks.
46:01Especially in summer, that's really hot.
46:04What I did was removing all the bricks.
46:06And I also made the design for tropicals.
46:10It's very important to have shade, humidity.
46:15Soon I put the ponds, the water.
46:18I got the humidity and I start to introduce all the new plants, new tropicals.
46:24All coming all together.
46:26I 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.
46:38Garden 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.
46:46This garden is Daniel.
46:49Daniel McLean.
46:50This is me.
46:51A person who likes to have peace.
46:54And this is peace.
46:55To see that I create this.
46:57And I can share with people.
46:59That is the meaning.
47:00That is everything to me.
47:12Have you ever dreamed of moving to the country
47:15and letting this gardening thing off the leash?
47:19Well, our next story is with a horticulturist and landscape designer
47:24who's created a stunning country garden.
47:27It's full of colour and intriguing plant choices.
47:31And the results are the stuff that gardening dreams are made of.
47:45My garden is the most important thing in my life.
47:53It's like breathing, really.
47:56It is my love and my passion.
47:58Don't tell Mr. True.
48:00But no, he's my love and passion too.
48:04But it is, yes.
48:05My name is Peter Trier.
48:17I'm a landscape designer,
48:20a passionate gardener and a horticulturist.
48:25Woodgreen is heaven.
48:28Woodgreen garden is in the centre
48:31of a property where we run cattle.
48:36Woodgreen is a mix of beautiful old trees.
48:40Garden beds that hold most interesting perennials, little bulbs.
48:47It's a place that I feel at home
48:51and where I work, really.
48:54It's every day.
48:56I 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,
49:09commonly called the Apostle plant.
49:12Now, I'll tell you why.
49:13Because it won't flower
49:16until the clump gets 12 leaves
49:18and then it will start flowering.
49:20Botanical name,
49:22Neomerica cerulea.
49:24From South America.
49:26Now, I'm really fortunate here in Bilpin
49:28that 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
49:39that come from sandstone country.
49:41But this one from South America does beautifully.
49:57Having four seasons is helpful
49:59because it gives me a range of plants I can grow.
50:04And so there's always something happening.
50:06It's like an orchestra.
50:07And that's why I love the Blue Mountains.
50:12In summer, our garden is full of colour.
50:16The hydrangeas are wonderful.
50:19Dahlias, lilies.
50:21I love my roses.
50:22And I like to collect the older ones,
50:26the heritage roses.
50:27And so that's summer.
50:29Autumn in the mountains,
50:30look, you don't have to do anything.
50:32It does it for you.
50:33When we planted our trees,
50:36we did select a lot of deciduous trees
50:39that would give us that lovely, rich colour.
50:41Winter is the time when the treasures come out.
50:47I'm crazy about galanthus or snowdrops.
50:50And I've become a galanthophile,
50:53which 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.
51:15My family were great gardeners.
51:17I loved 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.
51:29So I learnt to grow things.
51:32I made mistakes in my Sydney gardens
51:34from 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.
51:44I was greedy.
51:47And so Peter and I, my husband and I,
51:51got to a point where we wanted to move to 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.
52:09Now, it was a working property.
52:11But we started planting trees.
52:14We knew that trees were very important.
52:16I probably started with small garden beds.
52:22So I would finish a garden.
52:24And 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
52:34is 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
52:47to try and use things like water in a garden.
52:50Now, water can be a birdbath.
52:53Or it can be I have got a large-ish pond.
52:56And if I win the lottery,
52:57I'm going to put in a big, big reflective pond
53:01just 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
53:10where I can frame the view through.
53:14And as you can see, this tree here,
53:16the 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.
53:26I think contrast is wonderful.
53:28And I love the idea of a vista.
53:31If I can achieve this in several parts in my garden,
53:33I'm very happy.
53:36Being a collector of rare and unusual plants
53:39is totally important to me.
53:42And I think when I first came here
53:45and I was able to collect plants,
53:47I was very protective of them.
53:49That was mine.
53:50And I wasn't willing to share.
53:53I bought a lot of stuff
53:54from little specialist nurseries.
53:57And I still do.
53:58I still love collecting.
54:01But I'm much better now
54:02at sharing something with a friend
54:05in case you lose it.
54:07Because I've certainly learnt that
54:09by a bad experience, actually.
54:12We're not allowed now
54:13to just bring things into Australia willy-nilly.
54:16A very well-known nurseryman said to me once
54:19that what is in Australia,
54:21and I'm talking about exotic things,
54:22and natives too,
54:23is like gold.
54:25So we must, you know,
54:28look after what we have.
54:31This is only very tiny.
54:34It's an Oregonum dictamnus,
54:38or Dittany of Crete.
54:40Very, very rare.
54:41Only grows on the island of Crete
54:44and on cliffs, sheer cliffs.
54:47And the young men of Crete
54:49will try and climb the cliffs
54:52to pick it,
54:53to give to their lady friends
54:54because it's an aphrodisiac.
54:56And many of these gentlemen
54:57lose their lives too.
54:58Very, very rare.
55:03Here is an Anacodontia el-rao,
55:07a shrub from South Africa,
55:10and an absolute bee magnet.
55:13The bees love it,
55:14and it's so important
55:15to have bees in the garden.
55:18Here we have,
55:20I think,
55:20a beautiful little short-lived perennial,
55:23and it self-seeds itself
55:25around the garden.
55:26It's called a tweedia.
55:27That blue is really quite something.
55:30And they just pop up,
55:32but you won't find them in nurseries,
55:34and this is why it's special to me.
55:35But 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
55:46pop up in the garden and self-seed.
55:48A very unusual and rare plant.
55:53My garden is what I love
55:56and what I've developed,
55:58and it's grown with me.
56:03But it is heaven.
56:04If I die, I want to come here.
56:06I don't want to go anywhere else.
56:21Now, 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,
56:30a big announcement,
56:31and some precious memories.
56:33So don't miss it.
56:35I'll see you then.
56:38We're visiting the Australian Drylands Garden.
56:41And we're highlighting plants
56:43that will flourish in hot and dry conditions.
56:46I'm visiting a beautiful, sprawling garden
56:49in the Dandenongs
56:50that was designed by famed Edna Walling in the 1940s.
56:55And now it's being lovingly restored back to its former glory.
56:59And we've got a big announcement
57:03from a gardening icon.
57:04CHEERING
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