Garden Lovers, of all the gardens I’ve made its not often I can show you one that just seems to give more every year.
Ian & Noelene Dawes Cremorne rooftop is the exception…. and do you know, you can see Better Homes & Gardens presenter Jason Hodges show how easy this unirrigated space, made from exciting DGN succulent and water storing plants is roaring away this winter. Hope you can tune in for ideas in your own garden.
Better Homes & Gardens, 7pm Channel 7, Fri 24th July
Winter fire
Bromeliad gardening…. Enn Zud Style !
Maureen Green has made a living masterpiece in the charmingly tiny hamlet of Maungakaramea, north of Auckland on the way to Whangarei in New Zealand’s Northland.
Here, at the end of a long jewel encrusted driveway, is a bromeliad mother lode. But this is not an artless “pizza garden”, with taste free gobs of colour indescriminately daubed from patch to patch. Oh no, THIS comes from a master eye that sees everything, from the tiniest ruby edged margin to the full visual weight of truly magnificent hero plants.
Such is the creative agility of the horticultural mind; if your large tree falls with all epiphytic occupants catapulted to far flung garden parts, make the unsuspecting into a magical Tillandsia Water Tank…… Maureen has.
Especially rich in vrisea, neoregelia, aechmea & their interspecific crosses and hybrids, together with myriad tillandsia, nidularium, billbergia and canistropsis don’t let Greens Bromeliads unassuming street sign deceive you …. GO DOWN THAT LONG DRIVE and you will be rewarded.
Greens Bromeliads 0011 64 9 432 3759 kjgreen@xtra.co.nz Tangihua Road, Maungakaramea, Whangarei
Scanning the excellent Garden Drum by Catherine Stewart this week, I came across some rather good work by artist Julie Hickson show casing her impressive Pod + Pod range inspired by Sydney’s Northern Beaches where she lives. So impressed, that I just had to take advantage of the oh so easy on line point of sale available from the web site. Perfect for coastal themed house & gardens and especially in association with “warm winter” micro climate growing conditions that allow many to cheat like hell with planting that would otherwise be at the difficult end of its range once cooler June/July nights are with us.
After an admiring glance across the Botanical & Coastal examples of Julie’s fine work, you can then join her mailing list from the bottom of the News page for Studio Open Days, markets and events like the Pittwater Artists Trail.
Fellow Designer Russell Fransham at Matapouiri Bay, just north of Whangarei in New Zealand’s north island,
…where I found myself wandering around an impressive home garden of some 20 years or so. Interesting to see a few of the cool tollerant ginger family in heliconias like H. bourgaeana (shown beneath), H. subulata cv Thaysiana and H. tortuosa ‘Red Twist’ all flowering very well. I find the easy occurance of these in Russell’s garden very encouraging for us Australia’s east coast where minimum winter overnights would rarely descend beneath 7 or 8 degrees, against the Bay of Islands cooler 2 degrees and less.
A nice smaller clumping palm in Dypsis baronii, (like a better version of Golden Cane Palm) combined well with bromeliads like Canistropsis billbergioides cv. Citron. and a lot of interesting tillandsia and vriesea aside from many spectacular flowering shrubs in Brugmansia hybrids & species like B. sanguinea.
