ASGAP Autumn Plant Sale

 I'm going tomorrow!  Looking forward to seeing Peter Olde's garden...

http://asgap.org.au/grevillea/

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

 

And this is what I bought.  I was hunting for ground covers and grasses:

1 Ajuga australis (Austral bugle)
2 Scleranthus biflorus -- forms a soft, thick, pale-green carpet
3 Poa labillardieri (Common tussock-grass) h 0.5-1.3m, s 0.5-1.5m
2 *Themeda triandra, prostrate form (Kangaroo grass) -- Blue-green, turning
purple in autumn
1 Scaevola aemula white form (Fan-flower)
1 Arthropodium strictum (Chocolate lily) 1m
1 Lomandra glauca (Mat-rush)  0.3m x 0.3m

And I've bought a few shrubs:

1 Babingtonia (formerly Baeckea) virgata dwarf -- I love the soft foliage and
the tiny, scented flowers
1 Hymenosporum flavum 'Gold Nugget' (a native frangipani cultivar) -- Trying
again as the last one died due to too much afternoon sun!  It has fragrant
cream-to-gold flowers in spring-early summer and is rather more garden-sized
than its parent at 1m x 1m
Grevillea 'Pink Midget' -- to go under my pink-flowering bottle-brush
Telopea 'Sugar Plum' 3m x 3m -- yeah, yeah, I know... they say these new
cultivars are easier to grow...
Allocasuarina grampiana 3m x 1.5m -- I love casuarinas, especially the sound
they make in the wind, but the regular kind are too big for my garden.
Thryptomene stenophylla h 0.7m -- another nice little shrub
3 Acacia cognata 'Limelight' -- lovely mop-top foliage

We had a wander around Peter Olde's garden, and heard from all the usual
suspects -- Don Burke, Angus Stewart, Merv Hodge et al -- very friendly sort
of day. It was nice to see a few of us younger types with our kids too!

Peter Olde's garden had the advantages that come with 30 acres.  You can make
any and all kinds of garden with that sort of space!  I can't with my 822 sq
m, even though that is a large block by Sydney standards.  Not that I'm
bitter... much...

The garden is young and at this point is a stroll garden of specimens.  Its
greatest strength is the variation of foliage seen in the beds, which make
them enjoyable even at a time of year when many plants are not in flower, and
simply the chance to see how various plants cope with basically no additional
water.  OTOH I didn't find it a very convincing garden in terms of design; the
beds seem a bit plonked-down to me and the trees are stuck in the lawn a la
Victorian specimen gardens.  I'm more of the Edna Walling school of thought
and prefer my trees and shrubs mixed together in beds, with clear lawns.  But
maybe I'm just jealous...

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

 
what colour's it? i love ajuga. i'm going to get black ajuga when i next see
it. it's lovely.

down a bit...


maybe it's just a bad design & you're not at all jealous. :-) oh all right,
you are. ;-)

personally, i think trees in lawns looks tops!

but i'd want more in a garden than a bunch of stuff plonked in a lawn.
perhaps i am misunderstanding your description though.
kylie

 

Dark green foliage (not quite as dark as the black one) and blue bugles.



Hard to describe.  A few large specimens in sweeping lawns look great, but at
least part of this garden includes (small, I hope) trees planted less than 5m
apart.  Maybe it will look like a grove?  The new rainforest beds are
excellent, I think -- they will look like they've always been there as they
run out from the front boundary.  The problem is the shrub beds at the back.  
They are long curvy shapes -- fun for kids to run around -- but they don't
*connect* to anything -- not to the house, boundary or any other pre-existing
feature -- they are just, well, plonked there.  Full of spectacular and
well-cared-for plants, certainly, but unconvincing somehow as to design.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

 
  The problem is the shrub beds at the back.

hm, it sounds so. it sounds awfully 70s, even!

mind you, i am having a heck of a time working my garden plans out (it's all
about me, you know ;-) & am trying desperately not to make mistakes like
that but i'm just worried :-)  i have good aesthetic sense & know if
something is "wrong" or "right", but only after it's there, never before. it
is making me crazy tbh. i'm making a bed extension, with a blue theme, & now
i've done most of it, something's wrong with it but i don't know what, nor
how to fix it, & i can't imagine if it may be better when the rosemary &
lavender are bigger, or not. i have looked in a bazillion books to learn
what looks right & wrong, but, i just don't know about this.

good garden design is  harder that we allow.
kylie