Gardening Australia

Ok, so it has been a few months. I hadn't forgotten about the blog but I have been a bit busy

I'm afraid that it is time for the horticulturalist to come out a bit. But look, stick with it: you might learn something. Probably not from me in all honesty, but there it is.

Some of you will know that I now have a job working in a Garden Centre, hence the delay between blog posts, and this has brought the differences between the Australian native plants and gardening in general and what I am used to seeing in the UK.

I have spent twenty years working in horticulture and over that time I have developed a reasonable knowledge of plants. However, Australia's flora is sufficiently different to Europe's that I actually don't know many of the plants here at all. In fact, one of the main reasons that Penny and Zach are enjoying Adelaide is that I can't walk along spouting out latin names and "interesting facts" about the plants we are passing. Zach has actually said as much, and indeed is trotting this out at regular intervals: although, to be fair "being told about plants until you are really sorry" is actually a method of punishment I have employed from time to time.

It is a weird feeling for me. I am used to walking through the world and knowing numerous things about most of the plants I see. As some of you will know, I have spent a long time growing trees and these form a huge part of the landscape we live in, so I have always felt to some extent that these are a kind compass with which I orientate myself (in fact it is a source of aggrevation to at least one good friend of mine that I navigate London by the trees I planted, and never fail to point them out and offer aforementioned "interesting facts") .

We have a lot of horticulture around Adelaide, most famously in the form of the wine industry that pretty much surrounds the area on the other side of the hills. Also, as Adelaide is the state capital, we have a fantastic botanic garden, which is really worth visiting and is free, which means you actually find yourself wandering in when you have a spare half an hour. What does seem to be struggling is the wholesale plant industry (which supplies the Retail garden centres). Frankly, the droughts and subsequent water restrictions have signalled the end for a lot of the local nurseries. It seems that quite a few have closed meaning a lack of competition in the local plant sector and plants coming from as far as Melbourne to satisfy local retail demand. It is a bit like a nursery on the South Coast buying plants from Newcastle.

Probably the most interesting and apparent difference to the UK is the front garden, and actually gardens in general. One of the big contrast to most of England is that the majority of houses are built by individuals or as part of very small developments. The notion of the Wimpey Estate or Victorian terrace with everyone living to pretty much the same plan in terms of house and outside space just doesn't seem to exist here, particularly in the suburbs. Whilst you will find houses of similar designs on every street they are not necessarily next to each other, and with a more relaxed attitude to town planning new houses are being built on existing plots all the time. The different houses and gardens tend to reflect the age the decade they were built rather than the current trends as the notion of doing a garden makeover isn't quite so prevalent over here, so the garden you start with tends to be the garden that you have until the house is pulled down and the plot built over.

There are roughly three broad types of front garden that you can see going down the street.

1. Native plants:

Usually pretty scrub-like by European standards, but actually make good use of native plants to give a relaxed informal and above all low maintenance and low water usage garden; which is a big deal here. Although the UK is used to hosepipe bans, Adelaide is so much drier that without watering in the summer months your new lush garden doesn't really stand a chance.

2. Slightly English:

A patch of lawn bordered by shrubs, roses and agapanthus; or more usually all three. You might also get a couple of small trees. These gardens look pretty familiar to anyone from the UK, and in fact it is something that you don't tend to see around many other parts of the world. The difference here is that the plants often include decorative varieties of natives such as Corea and native Hibiscus. Roses are particularly well suited to Adelaide and really thrive in the hot sun.

3. Modern Adelaidean:

The more modern houses tend to have slightly formal gardens with a simple design proposition. Expect to see uniform rows upright trees or conifers along boundaries and paths edged with low hedges of Japanese Box or Japanese Spindle. Frontages lined with standard roses or evergreen magnolias are common. In fact one thing common to all the gardens I have seen over here is simplicity. If you were to have a border of plants in the U.K., you would tend to have lot's of different plants all blended together to give long season flowering or whatever. Over here it tends to be plantings of single varieties. This gives a greater impact in the season of interest for the particular plants and also seems to allow the design to hang together better with the rest of the house. So rather than just being a beautiful garden, it is one that accentuates the house.

Frankly, I'm not going to post pictures as examples here, but you can all use Google Earth, so search for St Georges, Adelaide and see what you can find.

As with the U.K., edible gardening has become much more popular. Most nurseries will have vegetable seedlings and herbs available throughout the year and with the climate being quite Mediterranean fruit trees are pretty popular. A lot of people grow Citrus of various kinds, Peaches, Apricots, Nectarines, Avocado and Figs as well as the Apples and Pears. Again, this has meant a pretty steep learning curve for me as I really haven't had a lot to do with these trees over the years and Adelaidean gardeners really want to know about all the details of every variety. I am picking it up though.

One thing that has struck me here is that gardens probably tend to be smaller in proportion to the size of the houses. Again, this is a trait we are seeing in Britain. New builds tend to be larger than the modest bungalows built in the last century and the outdoor space seems to more compact and segmented into pool/dining/whatever rather than lawn with the barbie shoved in the corner. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, with the inevitable rise in house prices, square footage of the house is the most important thing to realise the developers investment. Secondly, people tend to use gardens as an extension of the house rather as a discreet environment; so outdoor cooking and entertaining is much more the thing. Thirdly, with so many public open spaces with decent, unvandalised amenities people actually get out into the parks and on to the beaches when the weather is nice. We have a lot of free barbeques in the parks and it is very common to see groups of twenty or so people sitting around having a day out in the sunshine with their friends.

So, that is gardening Australia as I see it so far. You should all be safe for a few months now at least.

More to come soon.