Gardening

Not long ago, a 'good' backyard vegie garden had neat rows of cabbages and lots of tomatoes. There'd be carrots and green leafed silver beet and cucumbers, and green beans. Vegie gardens are changing.

Daylilies are so named because each flower only lasts for such a short time — sometimes truly only a day, sometimes for a few days.

I think I had been writing gardening columns for about five years before a kindly subeditor pointed out that I couldn’t spell ‘fuchsia’. But grow them? Yes — any brown-fingered novice gardener can grow fuchsias. But exactly how? Fuchsia’s spelling comes from being named in honour of a German botanist called Herr Fuchs by a […]

The days are short, my toes are cold and all too many gardens are winter bare just now.

Autumn is the gentle time in Australia. Spring can suddenly present you with a frost that withers the new shoots and tomatoes, but autumn is mostly blue skies. Autumn rain is usually gentle, the great thunder heads of summer gone. As I write this the persimmons are ripe, big fat orange fruit, and the leaves […]

Once there was a nymph called Daphne… actually the rest of the story about why she was turned into a sweetly scented bush is far too lascivious a story for a family website. But while other ancient Greek nymphs have faded into history, Daphne still blooms in our winter gardens — and her perfume is […]

Our 12-step guide to securing your garden in case of a storm.

“It’s called a ‘winter rose’ or hellebore,” she said. I looked down at the ankle-high plant with dull green leaves and even duller green-white flowers, then at the bright red real rose glory blooming on the fence. Then I looked back at the hellebore. “They call this a rose?” I said. My elderly friend looked […]

Summer is the time for kids in the garden — school holidays, and hopefully fun and fresh air instead of square eyes from watching too much TV. Today’s gardens though often don’t tempt kids outside. They’re neat designer gardens, created to impress onlookers, rather than with spots for cubbies, and trees with handy branches to […]

Year after year I wonder what I’ll put in our front flower bed, and year after year, after tossing up between stocks and delphiniums, or California poppies, or a froth of nemesia or dianthus, I plant the same again — petunias. They’re not always the same petunia. These days I go for the ‘spreading petunias’, […]