The Garden Clinic

Garden festival planner: Nelmac Garden Marlborough

18 March, 2021 | Michael McCoy

The gates open on incredible private gardens in this New Zealand festival, which also offers workshops - Great Dixter’s Fergus Garrett is the keynote speaker this year - and a garden party at Wither Hills Winery.

Garden Sculpture

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

Make your garden indisputably your own realm by the way you choose and use sculpture and ornament within it. Linda has some ideas for expressing humour, passion and personality in your garden.

Great Dixter

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

Is this old place England’s most exciting contemporary garden?

Great Ideas

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

Want some great garden ideas. Grab some tips and trends from the professionals who showed gardens in this year’s Hidden Design Festival.

Great ideas from Country Victoria

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

We found plenty of inspiration on our Ross Garden Tour of country Victoria last spring. Here are a few of our favourite ideas – all worth including in your own garden.

Green Escape

18 March, 2021 | Jason Busch

Michael Bates reckons that while a plumber might live with leaky taps, and a painter with chipped walls, a gardener never lives in weeds. To prove it he introduces his own garden in this extract from his new book, The New Australian Garden.

Highfields

18 March, 2021 | David Kennedy

In November 2014 David Kennedy and Andrew Dunshea, creators of Katoomba’s wonderful Clover Hill, embarked on a new garden over the mountain in Little Hartley. In this extract from Claire Takacs’ new book, ‘Australian Dreamscapes’, David tells what happened next

How to: arrange flowers

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

I love the look of flowers picked straight from the garden and casually arranged in a charming jug, jar, urn, vase - even a bucket. But when I pick a posy from my garden and aim for a natural aesthetic with casual grace, my arrangement looks not so much just-picked as just-plonked! So I asked Sonya Gardiner for help and these are her tips - the 5 Fs of Fabulous Flower Arranging.

How to: create a shell garden

18 March, 2021 | Joanne Aquilina

Succulents don’t need a lot of root space as they store most of their water and nutrients in their leaves. This means gardeners can get creative about where they create succulent gardens.

How to: create a water wonderland

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

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:

How to: grow a 'coral reef'

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

Such a simple idea – a coral reef garden full of dazzling succulents – and so fun! Philip Withers’ imitation of a world seen through water thrilled visitors to the Australian Garden Show Sydney and won him the people’s choice award.

How to: have garden fun with kids

18 March, 2021 | Kate Neale

‘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.

How to: lift your courtyard

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

In just one weekend the Garden Clinic team transformed a chilly corner into a welcoming sanctuary, that is simple to pack up and move to a new location when necessary.

How to: make a garden bridge

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

While most of us don’t have a lake, our gardens may still benefit by a bridge used to link different sections across a ‘stream’ of garden bed, or dry creek of stones.

How to: make a garden in a glass

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

Bottle gardens or terrariums are mini plant worlds to enjoy indoors.

How to: make a painted succulent bowl

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

Succulents can survive long periods of dry weather so they are great plants for people who forget to water! Isla paints up a pot to match a succulent selection.

How to: make a strawberry pot

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

Isla is looking forward to picking sweet fresh strawberries to eat with ice cream this summer. Follow her tips for your own homegrown dessert!

How to: make a sweet pea tepee

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

Isla is planning ahead by planting up a tepee of sweet peas. Come spring it will be a towering cone of sweet-smelling pretty flowers.

How to: make a wreath

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

A Christmas wreath made with flowers and foliage from your own garden beats the dazzle of commercial baubles and tinsel

How to: make heart-shaped topiary

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

Topiary is the garden art of trimming plants into shapes. You can make geometric shapes like balls or cones, and animal shapes like peacocks or chickens - even elephants! Isla decided on a heart for her topiary treasure.

How to: make moss art

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

Graffiti is so much more appealing when it’s green! Toronto is the home of moss graffiti but we think it’s worth bringing home. In fact when we posted about moss wall art our Facebook friends were thrilled. In case you missed that, here’s how to do it.

How to: press flowers

18 March, 2021 | Isla Barlow

Isla and her friends Abbey and Elise chose some of spring’s prettiest blooms to press and turn into cards for Christmas.

How to: style an ikebana

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

The key difference between an ikebana approach to flower arranging and a Western style is that in ikebana the focus is on line and space rather than mass. Instead of adding more flowers to make it look better, ikebana is about what can be taken away. The space between the elements is as important as the elements themselves.

How to: style balcony pots

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

To make a balcony feel like a garden it needs to surround you with plants. Somehow you have to get some plants up at eye level, and even above it. A small tree would be just the thing, but on most balconies a pot big enough to support a large plant is just too heavy once it’s filled with moist soil - and a tree! A more pragmatic approach is to arrange smaller pots at different levels. You need to get those pots up off the ground to really appreciate your balcony garden. Here are a few ideas.

How to: understand humates

18 March, 2021 | Arno King

Humates are prehistoric (20-50 million year old) decomposed organic matter, which is why they are sometimes referred to as ‘dinosaur compost’. They are increasingly being used by gardeners as a soil additive - with impressive results. In fact you may already be using humates on your garden as they are a component in many high-quality fertilisers.

Ideas from Marlborough

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

Marlborough's hills, valleys and coastlines have seen much change over the past two hundred years. Maori hunted flightless birds; squatters grew flax and farmed sheep for wool; a tinned rabbit industry briefly bloomed to deal with the rabbits introduced for ‘sport’ - until a shipload of tinned rabbit exploded in the Thames on its way to the London docks and now it’s wine that makes the region’s fortunes as the world continues to fall in love with the flavours of Marlborough savvy.

Ideas from Singapore

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

We grabbed some tropical inspiration in Singapore a few months ago when we took two groups of Ross Garden Tours travelers to the biennial Singapore Garden Festival.

In my garden: Frog Hollow

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

Linda’s garden at Catherine Hill Bay had a few false starts as killer black frosts and maddening weeds wreaked their worst, but it now has a welcoming sense of place.

In my garden: Hillandale

18 March, 2021 | Sarah Ryan

Sarah Ryan’s garden reaches a peak in autumn when the perennial border is at luscious full volume and the mature trees that nestle up to the old farmhouse throw fiery reflections into the lake. Here she tells us what she’s up to in this busy season.

In My Garden: Wendy Whiteley

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell & Wendy Whitely

Wendy Whiteley’s harbourside garden is Sydney’s secret public park. Here Wendy tells us about the garden in Autumn.

In my kitchen garden: Camden, NSW

18 March, 2021 | Mickey Robertson

Mickey Robertson’s kitchen garden at Glenmore House is as beautiful as it is productive, experimental and instructive.

In the garden with Ben and Ros Walcott

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

This large garden in Canberra’s Red Hill is a showcase of almost 1000 native plant species. Its owners, Ben and Ros Walcott are passionate plants people with a keen eye for design.

In the Garden: Broughton Hall

18 March, 2021 | David Musker

Find out what David Musker is up to at Broughton Hall in Victoria

In the Garden: Cruden Farm

18 March, 2021 | Mitch Burns

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch’s much-loved garden is on the brink of its big show as spring begins.Head gardener Mitch Burns takes us behind the scenes.

In the garden: Red Cow Farm

18 March, 2021 | Ali Mentesh and Robin Powell

In 1990, Ali Mentesh stood in the bald paddocks of Red Cow Farm and dreamed of a canopy of trees, a woodland-edged lake, and garden rooms fragrant with roses. In making the dream reality Ali turned himself into a garden designer sought-after for his imagination, and his hands-on experience of plants and how best to grow them.

In the garden: Retford Park

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell and Rick Shepherd

Rick Shepherd, head gardener at Bowral’s grand Retford Park, dishes the dirt on what goes on in the garden in spring.

In the garden: Sea-changer

18 March, 2021 | Peter Nixon and Robin Powell

Four years ago garden designer Peter Nixon traded in his inner-city Sydney courtyard for a big blank corner block on the Central Coast and turned it into this!

Indoor Plants

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

Our mission? To make coming home a pleasure when we step inside the front door, and take a deep, calming breath.

Is Villa Gamberaia the most romantic garden in Italy?

18 March, 2021 | Robin Powell

We join a long line of world-weary travellers who have fallen for the charms of Villa Gamberaia hook, line and sinker.

Jim Fogarty's Melbourne garden

18 March, 2021 | Linda Ross

Jim Fogarty has won a swag of international gold medals for garden design and Linda Ross finds that his private garden is just as lovely as you would expect.

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