Candidimage Photography

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.

Red Sand Garden

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Passion Fruit Begin to Flower

Plenty of re-growth and now in flower

After bring pruned back at the end of last season my passion fruit has grown back really well this year and is beginning to flower. I am taking this as a good sign that it has come to no harm after my giving it a good prune. At the beginning of spring I fertilized it with dynamic lifter and some potash to give my plant a boost and now that it is flowering I will give it some liquid fertilizer every two weeks. Tonight I decided as this plant gets all the afternoon sun that I would mulch the garden bed to help the soil retain water over our hot summers days. I am hopeful of a good yield from my passion fruit plant this year.

My healthy passion fruit plant

Monday, October 27, 2008

Alyogyne Huegelii

Another Australian native Alyogyne huegelii in flower and looking great at the moment, this medium shrub grows to 2-2.5 metres in height with a similar spread. The leaves are bright green and the flowers are large and purple to mauve, with five slightly overlapping petals. The flowers only last 1-2 days but new blooms continue to open over a long period. Alyogyne huegelii is a great plant for landscaping in drier climate, it is a fast grower and may become untidy in habit unless pruned regularly. It like a sunny position, but will tollerate some shade and will perform in a range of soils provided the drainge is good.
Propagation of this plant is from seed germiates readily, with no special pretreatment, it will also readily strike from cutting.

Summer Heat

Well summer is almost upon us and to get my garden ready I though it was time to put down some more mulch. I have a pergola down one side of my house which faces west and gets lots of afternoon sun. Although the pergola has been covered in shade cloth the ferns, orchids and cyclamen struggle with the heat when the temperature rise to 30 degrees and over. Trying to find a good quality mulch has not been easy to do, what I settled for in the end was coir. I bought 10 kg compressed block of coir once socked in water expands up to 120 litres. I am hoping by laying this mulch it will help keep in the moisture and help my plants survive the hot summer. I was quite happy with the overall effect of the mulch on the garden, it looked good when the job was complete. The colour of the coir contrasted well the the green foliage in the garden.