It’s time again for my annual Christmas themed post! This year I’m bringing you more Christmas inspiration, kicking off with this Christmas gift ideas for Gardeners. As usual this gift guide is Australian themed – with a focus on Australian botanical designs and unique products crafted by talented Australians. Gifts for Australian Gardeners Wallum Scarf/Wall Hanging Here is a truly special gift to start my native inspired giving ideas. Artist Edith Rewa is a textile designer in Queensland and created this intricate artwork that captures the spirit of our unique Wallum coastal heath land ..read more

What the Australian public wants to know about native plants and microclimate I wrote this article recently for the Australian Native Plant Society Garden Design Study Group. While it’s perhaps not a topic for the average gardener, I hope you still find it interesting! Australian native plants and microclimate On a daily basis, Australians collectively search for something on Google more than 300,000 times. In 2022 the “most searched” things  included Wordle, Shane Warne, Ukraine, Monkeypox, Drunken Chicken and Dahl recipes.  We go to Google to answer every conceivable question and ..read more

This week’s native plant of the week provides essential colour in a Australian native cottage garden at a time of year when blooms can be hard to come by! Flowering most profusely through autumn and early winter, with sporadic blooms also in spring and summer, Crowea are pretty small shrubs that fit ever so naturally into a cottage garden style.   Their foliage is soft and leafy in bright green tones mostly, dotted with small bright to pastel pink or white flowers.   Crowea exalata pink Crowea exalata Crowea exalata Besides providing welcome autumn colour, they are als ..read more

If you have a shady spot in your garden you can still fill it with colourful Australian native flowers! Here are a few of my favourites growing in the shaded positions in my garden. Most are on the south side of high fences or buildings, planted under large shrubs and trees and receive very little direct sunlight. Click any photo to see it full size. Plectranthus parviflorus ‘Blue Spires’ First up is the compact and low growing Blue Spires. It flowers prolifically in spring and sporadically throughout the rest of the year, even without any direct sunlight. The variegated leaves provide adde ..read more

This week I am delighted to feature my first guest gardener – you’re in for a treat! This garden is one of my favourite Australian native gardens and a great demonstration of the floral spectacle that can be achieved with our unique flora. Deb’s garden is on a suburban sized block but she packs in a lot of plants. Using smart plant layering and garden design practices that make the most of every inch, Deb has been able to create an Australian native garden that delivers colour all year round as well as providing abundant nectar and habitat. Click the photos below to see them full size. Rosell ..read more

“Help! My (friend/husband/wife/etc) wants to plant an English style garden. But I want to plant Australian natives. What do I do?” Firstly let me say, I get it. I love an English style cottage garden too. I love their meadow gardens, clipped hedges and cute cottage beds overflowing with flowers. My first garden many years ago was planted with roses and daffodils and other European beauties. The good news is – you can achieve the same English style with our beautiful Australian plants. And our bees, birds, insects and other critters will love you for it! Here are just a few of my favourite Au ..read more

In August 2023 I joined a retreat with Dr Sue Davis to explore and learn more about the plants of the Sunshine Coast wallum and coastal heathland environments. Over the course of 4 days we visited 4 wallum sites and spent time observing and drawing many plant species under the guidance of our guest artist, Edith Rewa. It was a most enjoyable few days and I thought readers may enjoy seeing a selection of my photos from the walks.   Emu Mountain On the first evening we did a quick bolt up Emu Mountain to observe the plants before the sun set. On the walk up we saw much Acacia hubbard ..read more

Many people I speak to don’t realise that there are many Australian native plants that do well indoors. Wandering around our local nursery I realise there is likely a very good reason for that – not a single native plant I spotted included that on the label. That may be just one experience, but I do think some clear labelling would go a long way to helping people choose native. When I first started buying for inside I would Google every plant name to check the origin, it was very time consuming.  Now I have to confess, I am still very new to indoor plants. We have 2 African violets that ..read more

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that beyond the garden and inside my home I also like to decorate with uniquely Australian floral inspired items. As I said in my recent segment on ABCs Gardening Australia, our native flora deserves to be celebrated, and there is truly no better expression of that than an artist using Australian floral motifs and designs to inspire their work. For the past few years I’ve been hunting down these artisans inspired by Australian plants and flowers for my own homewares and accessories collection. I have a huge list of favourites that I am going to sha ..read more

This week’s feature plant is a versatile Australian native plant that can tick so many boxes in your garden design. Native bush food, screening out the neighbours, hardy pot plant, lush foliage, beautiful flowers, growing in sun to shade in most soil types – it ticks all these boxes and more. As you probably know by now I am flower obsessed! So let’s talk about flowers first. At a distance you might think the abundance of flowers are pretty but nothing special. Mature specimens are covered in an abundance of white flowers in summer or autumn. Backhousia citriodora flowers prolifically and th ..read more