Seasonal Stars

Autumn is summer’s last hurrah with many plants providing a stunning finale before winter’s subdued moodiness.

Bloom on

Once summer draws to an end, you might be thinking about what flowers to sow to keep the colour blooming into autumn. Owner of online store Veggie Garden Seeds, Bec Shelley shares her favourites.

Summer: an abundant season

Summer is the season of generosity, spreading its largessewith bountiful colour, shade and perfume. Horticulturist and Ross tour leader, Paul Urquhart shares his top five.

Cutting Garden - Summer sizzlers to plant now

Continuing our series on cutting flowers; now is time to plant flowers for summer vases. We have chosen cleome, dahlia, cosmos, rudbeckia and zinnia.

Spring bling

Five of the best: wisteria gardens

Here’s our pick of the best places in the world to be thrilled by the fragrance, form and sheer delight of wisteria.

Apple crunch

Late autumn/winter is the perfect time to plant an apple tree. Apples are commonly grown in cooler areas of Australia, but nowadays, you can find ‘low-chill’ varieties that also grow and thrive in the subtropics.

Autumn Favourites

The Sweet Life

Nothing beats sweet peas for cut flower colour, charm, and scent! Master gardener, Colin Barlow shares his tips for tall, healthy, and vigorous blooms.

Award-winning Azaleas

​Camellia ‘Desire’

Is this the prettiest camellia of all?

​Canna ‘Australia’

The popularity of cannas is due to their long display of bold foliage and vibrant flowers. This hybrid is one of a new series called ‘Show Off’, which has been bred for resistance to disease and for clean, sculptural foliage.

3 must-have perfumes for winter

Confined to home base this winter, I am enjoying wandering aroma-therapeutically! When it comes to perfume I am spoilt for choice in winter, and I can’t resist picking a few fragrant stems to take back inside with me. They add a lovely note to the smells of baking puddings, and slow-cooking stews!

Algerian iris

Also called the winter iris, this plant originates from the Mediterranean and North Africa and consequently enjoys impoverished soils. It produces flowers on and off throughout the winter.

Angel's Trumpet, Brugmansia

It’s easy to see why the common name for the dramatic Brugmansia is angel’s trumpet. These sub-tropical beauties offer months of flowers and fragrance, all in an easy-care package.

Banksia

Visitors to Empress Josephine’s garden at Malmaison outside Paris were wowed by her banksia collection. Two hundred years later gardeners still thrill to these bold and beautiful flowers, but have cold feet about growing them. Graham Ross explains why, and reports on the new cultivars now available.

Beautiful Bamboo

Bamboozled over whether bamboo is a garden pest or a garden saviour? Graham explains why this lovely group of plants can be both – and how to choose the right one for your needs.

Meet: Dominic Wong

Camellia japonica

The Camellia japonica is the queen of winter, unrivalled for glamour, yet she is down to earth, easy to manage and long-lived. Graham Ross has the details.

Climbing ‘Pierre de Ronsard’

The Meilland family in the south of France created this beloved climbing rose in 1987. They named it after the 16th century French poet, whose sensuous, romantic and musical poems were highly regarded during his life.

Clivia

The trumpet flowers of this indestructible plant put them top of the list for dry areas, dry pots and under trees. Let’s take a closer look.

Flowering Gum 'Baby Orange'

Smaller than most grafted flowering gums, this gorgeous tree flowers all summer long with huge heads of bright orange blossom, followed by showy gum nuts, and a repeat flowering in autumn. 

Flowering Gums

Iridescent orange, pink and red gum flowers are the must-have plants for summer, bringing in flocks of nectar feeding parrots into your garden. They are followed by ginormous gum nuts that the seed eating birds just adore. Let’s take a closer look.

Hellebores, the Winter Rose

The winter rose is in a class of its own with shy pendulous bell shaped flowers that peek through dark foliage brightening the coldest days. Flowers can be spotted, speckled, green, plum, white, cream, pink, double, single and every variation between. Let's take a closer look.

Hibiscus

In their heyday, gorgeous, gaudy Hawaiian hibiscus were on every fashionable Australian garden’s must-have list. Their fashion star may since have dimmed but these exuberant flowers are still a slice of summer. Graham Ross asks you to take another look.

How to: grow kirengoshoma

Michael McCoy spills the beans on one of the cool climate, autumn-flowering gems that turn temperate gardeners green with envy.

Know your hydrangeas

Blue and white hydrangeas decorate long lunches and fill Church vases in the floral countdown to Christmas. Here we unwrap more goodies from the hydrangea family. You’ll think all your Christmases have come at once!

Know your lavender

The lavender must-haves are sun and well-drained soil. Start there then choose the lavender that suits your conditions - and desires.

Know your winter bulbs

When autumn leaves have fallen, elegant little floral petticoats burst from the soil in optimistic, spring-anticipating growth.

Know Your: Frangipani

Frangipani are familiar as the scent of summer but the range of species, colours, perfumes and leaf shapes might surprise you. Here Linda Ross tiptoes through a forest of frangi's and introduces us to some of her favourite varieties

Lilac

A small tree/large shrub with perfumed flowers in spring.

Meet: Elizabeth Rundle, peony-lover

Peonies seduced Elizabeth Rundle when she was just 16. She’s been a fan ever since, growing and selling tree peonies through a mail-order nursery, first in Canberra and now in Ballarat. Here she shares her story.

Ornamental Pear

This is one of the most beautiful ornamental pears available. It has a conical upright shape, and shiny dark green leaves that colour dramatically to gold, plum and burgundy in autumn. Masses of beautiful white flowers appear in spring.

Paper Daisies: Perennials

Forgo short lasting annual daisies in favour of these long lasting perennial types and your happiness and bright wildflower will endure for years not weeks.  

Perennials

We have fallen in love all over again with romantic flowery gardens packed with perennials. This group of plants offers the gardener an amazing range of colours, textures and shapes to play with. Here Sandra Ross shares the love, answering the most frequently asked questions about this exciting group of plants, and choosing her must-have favourites.

Perfumed Roses

Spring brings a new bunch of roses to nurseries. These new introductions are the latest in a long history of rose evolution. 

Pieris japonica 'Temple Bells'

This lovely shrub has a few common names including Andromeda, Temple Bells and Lily of the Valley shrub, though it’s not related to the true Lily of the Valley (Convalaria majalis) at all. You might also hear it called Pearl Flower – a reference to those lovely flowers.

Pineapple Lily

This elegant bulb grows with a rosette of fleshy foliage that is green or spotted with purple, and a flowering stem densely covered in greenish-cream flowers, often tinged with purple.

Pink Lilies

These tiger lily bulbs turned up on my desk last year (from Tesselaars) so I planted them across the front of our Garden Clinic HQ in spring, alongside that gorgeous rose ‘Pierre de Ronsard’. 

Plants I Love: peony

Years ago, on one of our early Jacaranda Cruises, a woman presented me with a cardboard toilet roll. I was a bit surprised until I saw the round pink bud inside. It was a single long stem of the‘Sarah Bernhardt’ peony. Over the next two weeks I was captivated as the bud gradually opened to a multitude of pink petals and a boss of golden stamens. I’ve been mad for peonies ever since and have admired them in peak perfection in gardens in England, Canada, USA and France, as well as in cool climate gardens in Australia.