Tag Archives: perennial

Iris cretensis 'Mia' Winter flowering Iris unguicularis

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There can hardly be a more useful, more obliging perennial than the winter flowering Iris unguicularis which starts to bloom in May and carries on its display well into September. The clone most commonly found in gardens is known throughout the horticultural world as The Algerian Iris. Continue reading →

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 →

Camellia minus all flowers and buds Who will rid me of the troublesome beasts?

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Help!! The deer are somehow getting into our garden again. Can our international GardenDrum support network come to the rescue with some advice? I thought I had solved the problem 18 months ago when we got the front gates working again and put up deer fencing along a low section of the boundary wall of our garden in Argyll in the west of Scotland. Continue reading →

Ctenanthe lubbersiana provides brilliant flashes of yellow in the shade Ctenanthe – the never never plants

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Do you have some Never Never Plants in your garden? If you live in a warm climate, you just may have, and you wouldn’t even know it. These are tough plants that are often relegated to the back corners of shaded gardens or office interiors. They don’t often feature in garden books or articles so there widespread existence is testimony to their hardiness. If you have some shady spots and are looking for some lush low maintenance hardy plants, these could be the plants for you. Continue reading →

Jud's agave and succulent garden California Jud’s amazing agave & succulent garden

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I have the Long Beach Marathon to thank for finding this garden. No, I didn’t run the marathon, more like actively avoided it. The marathon barricades cut off much of my end of Long Beach, so trying to get a few errands done was a circuitous challenge. I ended up in neighborhoods I don’t often see, such as the one where this front garden fills a corner lot. I vowed to return. Last night, I found it again, even though I had misremembered the street name. Who needs street names with a garden like this? I bet locals use it for reference: “Hang a right at Little Lotusland…” Continue reading →

Rosa ‘Jean Geldenhuys’ is a tough rose, with petals that do not fall, which means the blooms stay on the plants until the rich cream bleaches to white with pink tinges around the edges of the petals. The plant is disease-resistant and extremely vigorous There’s a garden in my backyard!

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It is not the first time I am telling the story of my garden to an audience – I did that for five years when I had the most wonderful audience of garden lovers across sunny South Africa, all readers of the popular South African monthly magazine, SA Garden. Now – through GardenDrum – I hope to find a new audience of gardeners who would like to share my garden with me and share their gardens with me! For those of you who have not read any of my garden articles I published the past 10 years, let me introduce myself: I have gardening in my blood. Continue reading →

Lambley Nursery2 Lambley Nursery

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Just outside of Ballarat is a hidden gem. A beautiful garden appears much like an oasis of delight in the middle of the Victorian goldfields. A picture perfect farmhouse sits nestled amongst some simply stunning displays. Lambley Nursery is David Glenn’s labour of love.
David and his artist wife Criss Canning have molded the property into what it is today. Open to the public, you can wander amongst a variety of gardens and easily find something that will ignite some inspiration. Continue reading →

Viola hederacea 'Monga Magic' Australian plants for shady spots

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One of the perennial gardening problems (if you’ll pardon the awful pun) is finding plants that will thrive in shady spots next to fences or underneath established trees. Even more difficult is to find ones that also flower well in these conditions. As a lover of Australian plants I want to share a few of my favourites. Continue reading →