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Friday, November 7, 2008

Australian Garden Visit - Post Seven Rockpool Waterway

Australian Garden - Rockpool Waterway

Photos follow the waterway from start to finish

The Rockpool waterway flows along the full-length, of the Escarpment Wall Sculpture. At the top of this rockpool it starts off in a source pool and gentle flows from the ground. Then gentle flows down a series of four cascades, with that wonderful sound of running water. It is a beautiful shallow Rockpool Waterway, where children are encouraged to wade, but not swim, 'between the flags'. The water is recycled at the bottom and pumped up to the top to restart it's journey.

Australian Garden Visit - Post Six Kid's Backyard

Australian Garden - Kid's Backyard

This is a children friendly garden and lets face it there are not many gardens that cater for the children. But this area has been set aside just with them in mind, a place to challenge their imagination and let them go exploring and run off that excess energy. The idea of the large inverted tree trunks is to represent a dinosaur.

Photos of the children's play ground

The Australian Garden has it's own garden club for kids, called Garden Grubs Kids Club. It is intended for children aged 5 - 10 years and all members receive a back pack full of goodies. The Australian Garden has an activity program intended for the children over school holidays. What a wonderful way to encourage the youth and our next generation into gardening and the environment.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Australian Garden Visit - Post Five Home Garden

Australian Garden - Home Garden

This is part of the home garden display

This area of the garden was one of my favorites parts, with the many faces of the room, which looks entirely different from each angle you view it. And many ideas were born from this display for my garden at home. All I need now is a willing husband to help the ideas come to fruition.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Australian Gardens Visit - Post Four Future Garden

Australian Gardens - Future Garden

Photos raised garden beds

This area has been set out with a number of raised garden beds, which gives a eye catching effect. Each garden bed has been planted out in a colour theme eg: red, blue, yellow, orange flowering plants and so on. Planted in the garden bed with the red border are some of Australia's rare and endangered plants. This area gives the visitor a wonderful view of how truly beautiful a native garden can look.

The red and white pole through out the raised beds are a reference to scale bars which are use in scientific journals to scale size plants. They have been used in these garden beds to indicate the size the plants would grow to in the wild if they have not been genetically modified in any way. They all so make eye catching display and a good talking point as visitors wander around this section.

This garden is designed to highlight the reality and the difficulties posed by the artificial manipulation of our plants to achieve particular commercial or aesthetic results. It includes horticultural techniques eg: grafting, hybridisation, developing of cultivars and recently plant bioengineering.

Photo raised garden beds green and pink

Australian Garden Visit - Post Three Water Saving Garden

Australian Garden - Water Saving Garden

Dry Terrace

The Water Saving Garden features groups of plants with similar needs suitable for suburban gardens. This water saving garden comprises three distinct watering regimens, showcased in three unique terraces. Each terrace features plants and natural mulches they are dry terrace, the water-conscious terrace and the water wise terrace. The water usage of each terrace is marked by coloured watering cans 12 Blue, 8 Yellow, 4 Red the decreasing number indicating the terrace using the least to the most amount of water.

Views of the Dry Terrace garden beds

Low Water Terrace

The water saving garden gives the visitor invaluable information on our most precious resource of modern times water. There are wonderful signs erected through out five exhibition gardens, that highlight the use of natives plants and ways we can all use native plants in our own gardens. To help sustain home garden in these extremely dry times, we all need to re-think our gardens and be water wise. Implementing a few simple measures can make all the difference to the survival of our gardens.

Views of the low water terrace gardens beds

A very important step is plants selection for suitability to you area, suitability to your garden and to your water availability. Treating dry, water repelling hungry soil with a good quality cover of compost (compost increases the organic content of soil, which will help hold water) digging it through before adding a generous cover of mulch. This will not only benefit your soil but the health and well being of your plants. Catching and storing rain water and the use of grey water on lawns and non native plants, all these measures will help to grow a water saving garden.

Views of the moderate water terrace gardens beds

Signs signifying each different terrace

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Australian Garden Visit - Post Two Diversity Garden

Australian Garden - Diversity Garden

Diversity Garden

Moving on from the Red Sand Garden following the path to the Diversity Garden. In this garden area there is one plant from each of the 85 botanic regions in Australia, coastal, alpine and tropical. This garden gives the visitor views of plants that can be incorporated in to the home garden. Each garden bed gives the name of the plant in most instances and the region from which the plant is common. In this area each bed is sectioned off with thick white rope and many different mediums have been used as mulch. Examples of mediums used are crushed granite, broken shell, small and large stones, red sand, pebbles. I have included some closeup photos to show mediums use and one photo taken from some distance away to show the overall effect and and to show just how defined the garden beds are using this method.

Diversity of Mulch

Australian Garden Visit - Post One Red Sand Garden

Australian Garden - Red Sand Garden

The Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne is home to the new Australian Gardens the gardens are open everyday except Christmas Day from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm.
How to get to the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne Cnr Ballarto Road and Botanic Drive Cranbourne (off South Gippsland H'way) Melway Ref: 133 K10

We re-visited the Australian Gardens today as we do once a year and what a way to spend several hours enjoying what this magnificent garden has to offer. We spent 3 1/2 hours there and I felt that we were some what rushed. I think to do justice to the gardens we should have arrived earlier and taken more time to wander around taking advantage of what the garden to offer. While I was there however I did take time to take many photos, so over the next week or so I will post some of them on this blog in a effort to show some of the extraordinary view of this wonderful garden.

Red Sand Garden

I will start the journey with photos of the Red Sand Garden, this striking red sand is the first thing visitors see once leaving the visitors centre and entering the garden and walking down the stairs. You could be forgiven for thinking you are in red heart Australia with the striking red sand and the contrast effect of the grey-blue salt bush. The Ephemeral Lake Sculpture is inspiring but this area is out of bounds to the public, but you can experience many different view of this area as you make your way around the gardens.