Garden Clinic Blog

In January, clip, snip, mow and trim. It's time for the post festive clean-up in the garden

In February, humidity is at its summer peak. The garden will need a helping-hand to get through the next few weeks and into the cooler weather.

Diamond Membership – a brand new level of membership and let me tell you, it’s the best one yet.

Cool as a cucumber is the taste of summer.

Not as heavy as a traditional brownie, but with a satisfying double-choc hit and bonus health food scores from its secret (almost indetectable) vegetable content, this is a great, year-round treat. In summer serve chilled, straight from the fridge.

Shade, privacy and a place to show off fabulous plants - who doesn’t want a pergola!

Deb and Scott Wilson make garden magic in Tasmania's stunning Meander Valley.

Landscape designer Philip Johnson’s passion is to connect people with nature. In this extract from his new book Connected: the sustainable landscapes of Philip Johnson, he explains how that connection is deepened and refined at his home in Olinda, and creates a billabong to die for!

Secret Gardens is one of Sydney’s most successful garden businesses – designing, constructing and maintaining beautiful gardens across the city. In this extract from a new book featuring 19 of the company’s finest gardens, founder Matt Cantwell explains how a garden can balance privacy with views out - and into - the garden.

The chance cross between an Illawarra flame tree and a kurrajong is a tree that should be better known and more widely grown.

It’s said that there is a wattle in flower somewhere in Australia every day of the year. Not all of the seed of these 1000-odd species are edible, indeed some a slightly toxic, but there is evidence that aborigines ate the seeds from at least 120 of them. Wattleseed has a unique fragrance and flavour – mocha-chocolateyy, smoky and nutty all at once.

A patch of native grass, or a whole lawn of it, will help preserve our beautiful Christmas beetles. Linda Ross tells how it’s done.

Sustainable landscape designer Philip Johnson generated rare garden-related headlines when his ‘Trailfinders Australian Garden’ took out the Best in Show award at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2013. What happened next?

Summer brings the vegetable patch’s peak of production. The heat of the sun powers growth, but threatens disaster too. Rise with the birds for early deep watering, and let your mantra be mulch, mulch, mulch.

‘Be back by dark’ tends not to be a phrase we associate with childhood these days, but given the chance, children still relish an opportunity to play outside. Kate Neale and her co-author, daughter Leelu, have plenty of ideas to help parents, grandparents and carers have summer fun in the garden with kids.

When it’s sweltering outside and the kids need some cool relief, homemade fruity ice-blocks are the answer. When they’ve been demolished, ask the children to help make a new batch, ready for the next hot afternoon.

Waterlilies are shy until the mercury hits 30, and then they unfold into beautiful blooms. We grow them in large bowls and pots, and pick them to decorate the table through summer.

You don’t need a big space to have your own water feature: a sunny spot on a balcony or in a courtyard will do. You can use any container, as long as it hasn’t had chemicals in it that would kill the fish. Isla made her water feature in a half wine barrel. Here’s how.

We’re all going on a summer holiday - and the garden is staying behind! But with a little forward planning your garden can be just as lovely when you return as it was before you left.

Need some advice on roses? Meet a walking rose encyclopedia!

Bondi is known for its beach, babes and bikinis, and not for its gardens. But this is where I find one of Australia’s most imaginative pocket-sized spaces. Generously spirited and full of dry-spell ideas to bring your garden to life.

The Singapore stopover might once have been about shopping, but now it’s about gardens. Add these destinations to your itinerary.

Hot and steamy with the odd torrential downpour is the order of business for the subtropical garden. Our resident tropical garden expert Arno King has the lowdown on what’s happening this December in the subtropical garden.

Cool green curtains dripping delicate leaves from fine stems are mesmerising. Reversing the trend of growing upward to the light, plants that grow down, and hang around are jewels for gardeners.

Justine Smith’s beautifully grown rhipsalis flew off the tables at Collectors’ Plant Fair this year. Don’t worry if you missed out - she’s now supplying Flower Power with these hairy hanging delights under the Jungle Cactus label.

The show gardens at Singapore's first-ever Horticulture Show earlier this year blurred the boundary between the natural and built environment and introduced us to a whole new place to garden - the ceiling!

My garden is largely a tropical holiday filled with luxurious foliages and a fruit salad of orange, hot pink, red and gold flowers. A sprinkling of blue grounds that hot colour in a garden bed that sweeps around an oval lake of lawn. In summer the best thing to do is find a seat in the shade and soak it up.

Add some summer dazzle to a sunny balcony with these pot-loving beauties.

No one does a hanging basket of summer flowers quite like the English, and, inspired by a recent trip, we’re determined to give it a good shake this summer. We’ve included here some favourite basket-happy plants with the right cascading habit - and some options for really hot spots. The thing is to design an arrangement like a posy, with a mix of textures and colours. Have fun, be bold, try something new, and toss it all at the end of the season.

The soft clouds of hydrangea flowers are a promise of summer. Let’s take a closer look at growing these plants year-round.

In the Kitchen Garden series that shares the knowledge and experience of food growers around the country, Kate Neale dishes the dirt on her top summer growing tips and her favourite new harvest.