Garden Designs
I went to my first Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show last weekend, and I’ve come home suitably inspired and filled with ideas and a renewed vision for what I want my garden to look like.
One of The Diggers Club’s gardens - I love the orange agastache with the little white gaura (butterfly bush). The purple is verbena bonariensis which is a bit weedy in Queensland, but pairs nicely with the apricot-orange tones.
I love wild rambling cottage gardens, packed with flowers, everything mingling and lots of variety, and there were plenty of gardens there that ticked all my boxes. But looking at them made me contemplate the difference between ‘art’ or ‘design’ and ‘gardening’. I’ll admit the designers have a very small space to work with and have done an amazing job at creating beautiful spaces, but they are the equivalent of a garden look-book - or a giant bouquet. To achieve a lot of the looks, the plants need to be grown separately and then transplanted and treated mainly as annuals, ripping them out and replacing them when they grow too big. Which is fine if you have unlimited time and money. But to create a sustainable garden that grows into itself and is capable of looking after itself needs a little bit of a different approach. There are lots of ideas and combinations to take away but with a good dose of realism, and a little plant knowledge (or at least read the back of the tag…) Nevertheless it was very enjoyable and there were plants that I will buy and combinations that I will copy! (Mainly, I really want to try Agastache again….)
I loved the proteas (the yellowy red leaves in the middle left) tucked away in here, and the incorporation of the juvenile eucalypt leaves (centre front) - but in reality these would need much more space! I still might try incorporating one somewhere though, the silvery colour and round leaves breaks up the ‘long green’ feel of lots of the other plants.
Pink agastache, yellow rudbeckia, purple geraniums/cranesbills (and a little bit of statice) and beautiful wispy grasses.
The dark purple ornamental sweet potato (which I use lots of) is VERY ambitious and needs a heavy handed prune regularly and the bright pops of yellow aloes would probably fare better long term in more sun. But the lush feel of the garden is very peaceful and lots of good ideas for different textures.