Tag Archives: landscape designer

Circles and squares in the Blue Water Roof garden Chelsea 2013 What’s hot…or lukewarm

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Apart from the few bright sparks among the Chelsea gardens, the majority of year’s main display gardens were safe, tasteful and disappointingly dull. Phillip Johnson’s Australian garden was an obvious Best in Show standout with its innovative plant palette and exciting raised studio pod, and I loved the ‘Seeabiility’ garden, ‘The East Village’ garden with its flowing sinuous lines, and the huge greenwall in the ‘Stoke-on-Trent Story of Transformation’ garden. And the ‘As Nature Intended It’ garden was refreshing in its rejection of the now ubiquitous perennial flower mix. Continue reading →

Roberto Burle Max Sitio Roberto Burle Marx’s private Sitio

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Roberto Burle Marx single-handedly changed the face of tropical garden design while introducing to the world a host of amazing indigenous Brazilian plants hitherto ignored by Brazilians. In the process became an international figure. It’s intriguing to delve into his soul as an artist and plantsman to find out why his impact was so gargantuan. Continue reading →

With my construction team at MIFGS 2013 Becoming a landscape designer

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Hi everyone, my name is Phil and this is my first entry for GardenDrum. I am a landscape designer and I love what I now do! That must reflect on people, as they already ask me “Why do you have so much energy?” The answer is “I love it!” It’s funny because if you ask me “How did you become a landscape designer?” the answer’s the same… Continue reading →

Bundanoon garden Solving garden design problems

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Is your garden very small? Long and thin? Big and overwhelming? Or perhaps you have problems with very sunny or shady parts in your garden, especially narrow walkways beside the house or dry shade areas under mature trees. Maybe your garden is just, well, plain boring! I talk with landscape designer Louise McDaid about solutions to many common garden design problems. Continue reading →

'Urban Sanctuary' Design Lee Bailey MIFGS Student Competition 2013 My Student Garden at MIFGS 2013

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Last June, Landscaping Victoria announced the brief for this year’s Student Design Competition at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show 2013 (MIFGS). The Country Fire Association was to be our ‘client’ and the theme we were to build was ‘Landscaping for Bushfire’. We were to adhere to the guidelines set out in the Landscaping for Bushfire manual which even helps us to work out what plants we are to include in our gardens. Our designs were to reflect a suburban garden allotment and from there we were free to do what we liked in our 6 x 6m space. “Fantastic”, I said to myself. Continue reading →

Lomandra hystrix 'Katie Belles' Using grassy plants in garden design

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For those of you who have followed my posts, you will know that I am an ardent fan of foliage plants. Australian grass-like plants certainly fit into this realm, and are used regularly in my garden designs and landscaping. The late Christopher Lloyd first kindled my instinct for using grassy plants in my designs about 15 years ago. He was particularly fond of the Miscanthus plant group, which I also love. But here the tale is about our indigenous plants. Continue reading →

13retain1_lg Mistakes

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“A man’s mistakes are his portals of discovery.” – James Joyce Then again, Joyce was a man of ideas. I’m sure no contractor ever said to a client: “Oh, that retaining wall I put in last fall is collapsing now? But of course! How could something so bourgeois hold back the anarchy of our modern age?? Don’t you see?? It was futile from its inception!!!” Continue reading →

Phillip Withers at MIFGS 2013 Melbourne FS – who dared to be different?

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Last week’s Melbourne Flower Show was great fun but there were many similarities between most of the big display gardens. They were all very beautiful, very accomplished and very…..tasteful. As much as that’s lovely to look at, I did hanker after the days of Jenny Smith’s extraordinary 2008 homage to Martha Schwartz with its bizarre parade of painted tyres and gnomes, Rick Eckersley’s black and white garden or the very memorable “musk-sticks and burial mounds” (not my words) of Eco Concepts garden way back in 2004. Continue reading →