Missed the Show? Here's the 'grow'!

Do you love your plants but weren't able to make it to this year's Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show? Don't worry, we have put together some plantlife highlights just for you! Join me on a personal photographic tour through the gardens, plants, and moments that made the Show bloom.

Show Gardens

These gardens are one of the Show's headline acts, attracting Australia's top landscape designers. Today, I will show you some of my highlights from two of those gardens.

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A garden designed to inspire connection and reflection. Designed by Rob Cooper from Distinctive Gardens in Adelaide, this garden took out the City of Melbourne Award of Excellence for Best In Show, as well as a Gold medal. I was most interested in it because it also won the Horticultural Media Association Award for Best Use of Plant Life.

When I spoke with Rob, he told me that his team had chosen to do a predominantly native garden: "We've tried to make a lush green textured garden to sort of challenge the perception of what native gardens look like. My design style is not this style all the times, but the shape and the form is, so I was really, really wanted to focus on trying to have a place of calm where you can go in and enjoy, but also you could apply it in a residential application where you could do it in a modern style house. So it was just trying to push the boundaries of what I can do, but also show other people what can be done with native plants."

Coastal banksia (Banksia integrifolia) and the Queensland bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestris) provide height in this garden. Tussock grasses and other tussock-like plants soften this garden, adding gentle movement and a naturalistic texture to anchor the planting scheme. These plants include Dianella 'Breeze', knobby club-rush (Ficinia nodosa), sea rush (Juncus kraussii), common tussock grass (Poa labillardierei), and kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra). Banksia 'Birthday Candles' provide colour at the ground level, whilst topiaried white correa (Correa alba) spheres add a certain "je ne sais quoi". That is French for "I don't know what", but implying a positive reaction. Should have left it in the French with the over-explanation!

The sharp-eyed among you may notice a few exotic species in the midst of this garden such as the grape vine (Vitis vinifera) on the pergola, the aptly named 'no mow grass' (Zoysia tenuifolia) covering the ground, or the Chinese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis) or reed grass (Calamagrostis spp.) varieties blowing in the wind. Who said natives and exotics can't be together in a garden?

NB. The full plant list for this garden is available here.

Between Moments

Ben Hutchinson Landscapes received a Silver medal for this delightful garden featuring many plants, and a sauna and recreational pond - the latter probably one of those names given to a hardscape feature to make it easier to get through planning approvals! Ben is a natural pond specialist, and inspired by Australian landscape, as you can see in his planting selection. HIs connection the wildlife is seen here in the sympathetic sculptures of platypus and spoonbills inhabiting the pond.

Ben's design philosophy is very close to our hearts. His goal is to maximise the use of rainwater throughout his gardens, and to use regionally and sustainably sourced materials wherever possible and promote the use of indigenous and Australian native plants. Some of the plant highlights here include Bracteantha Whites (Xerochrysum bracteatum), mountain correa (Correa lawrenceana ‘Croajingolong’), spindly grevillea (Grevillea endlicheriana), Grevillea ‘Flame’, Grevillea ‘Murray Valley’, lemon-scented teatree (Leptospermum petersonii), candle heath (Richea continentis), dragon heath or pineapple candleheath (Richea dracophylla), and Xerochrysum ‘Swamp’. Kuranga Native Nursery supplied these plants - link supplied here just in case there are any Melburnians reading this who want to know where they can get some great native plants. I don't get any commissions!

Note that Richea dracophylla is endemic to Tasmania. You can find this endemic shrub at Plants of Tasmania Nursery. This striking foliage plant can grow up to 3m and is suited to a cool, moist garden or pot. Its creamy white flowers on terminal spikes in summer are pretty stunning too.

Boutique Gardens

Managed by Landscaping Victoria, this garden display category allows established and emerging landscape designers and architects to participate in the Show. One display here really caught our eye.

Room to Breathe

Designed by Riley Field and Marie-Claire Geach from Lone Pine Landscapes, Room to Breathe received a Silver medal in the Boutique Gardens category. For me though, it was a definite show garden winner. Whilst I am all for displays sharing designs that the average punter can achieve in their backyard (or frontyard), I do like designers to push the boundaries and provide a little inspiration above and beyond what we usually see.

Room to Breathe is a beautiful garden. I describe it as a lovely (post-modern?) take on a Japanese Zen garden that would fit neatly into many a city courtyard. Plants for this garden were supplied by Fytogreen, the green infrastructure specialists with whom I completed an internship just before I finished my Master of Urban Horticulture at the University of Melbourne in 2017. Mistletoe cacti (Rhipsalis spp.) drape from the roof, whilst a flurry of ferns and other lush foliage plants reach up from the rocks. If you look closely, you will see that the plants are regularly misted to keep up the humidity. Just love this!

Challenger Achievable Gardens

This competition offers students and educational institutions the opportunity to showcase their design skills and horticultural knowledge, promote achievable gardening and encourage the use of high-quality plants in the landscape. Each year the displays designed and constructed by these students just gets better and better, and their use of plantlife more nuanced. Here are some of my favourites from this year.

Mediterranean Musings

The first stop on this part of my tour is with Adam Clements from Holmesglen TAFE, whose garden 'Mediterranean musings' received the Best Use of Plantlife award in this category, as well as a Silver medal. The pollarded olive tree (Olea europa) is a real showstopper ias a feature tree in this setting. An espaliered lemon (Citrus x limon 'Eureka') is pretty good too!

The plantlife includes a mix of textures, leaf shapes, sizes, and forms, adding depths and interest. Topiaried tree germander (Teucrium fruticans) and white correa (Correa alba) mirror the concrete spheres, showing that softscape and hardscape can complement and enhance each other in a well-designed landscape. The plants used here are all suited to a dry climate as one would expect of a Mediterranean-inspired garden, note the soft-grey foliage seen on many of these varieties.

The selection of agapanthus in this garden is interesting. I have always thought of agapanthus as weedy. The African lily (Agapanthus praecox) is tolerant of a wide range of conditions and can invade forest edges and open forests across the country. The cultivar used here, (Agapanthus praecox 'Perpetual Peace') is said to be sterile. However, if you are thinking of using it, I would suggest that you remain cautious and avoid planting it in environmentally sensitive areas.

Adam has started his own landscape design business, Tall Poppy Landscapes. If you are in Melbourne and like what you see below, you can get in touch with him via Instagram.

States of Green

Next garden on 'my tour' is that designed by Emily Rubia and Zoe-Beth Rush from the London College of Garden Design. 'States of Green' was the overall winner in this category, taking out the Exellence award and a Gold medal.

Emily and Zoe-Beth brought together a wonderful mix of plants from their respective home states, Victoria and Queensland. Tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) take pride of place Perhaps living where we do in Liffey, I take having these ferns in our 'garden' for granted, forgetting the wonder they provide to those people who don't live in such a setting. On another note, I loved the little purple pops of colour that the native fan flower (Scaevola aemula) brought through the mostly green foliage; purple and green being the colours of the suffragettes. I have a dream one day to create what I call a garden honouring those women who fought for our rights, featuring plants with purple and green flowers and foliage. One day!

Emily now runs her own landscape design business in Melbourne (Rubira By Design), whilst Zoe-Beth operates Hive Landscape Design in Queensland.

Bush Bathing

Whilst I had to admit that the bath that Katie Fraser from Melbourne Polytechnic featured in her garden initially attracted me (along with the wineglass!), once I looked closer, I was impressed by her sympathetic planting scheme. Katie also received a Silver medal for her garden, which she told me is an Australian take on the the Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku or 'forest bathing'.

All the plants featured in this garden are locally native, and most of them are edible. Those of you who may have been following me for a while know how much I love plants that are native AND edible AND ornamental too. Apologies for the use of capital letters, but I am a bit excited! Kate really nailed the brief if you ask me. Edible plants in this planting scheme include seaberry saltbush (Rhagodia candolleana) - berries and leaves, berry saltbush (Einadia hastata) - berries, bower spinach (Tetragonia implexicoma) - leaves once cooked, Austral stork's-bill (Pelargonium australe) - tubers, and coastal saltbush (Atriplex cinerea) - seed, leaves . For more ideas on how to cook these ingredients, do yourself a favour and get a copy of Rees Campbell's (aka The Feisty Tasmanian) book, Eat More Wild Tasmanian. When you do, make sure to try her recipe for 'tempura battered coastal leaves' using Atriplex cinerea. Scrumptious!

Katie is running her own design business, Lateral Garden Design.

Mi Casa Es Tu Casa

The next garden on my tour provided me an opportunity to look past my own personal bias towards what I perceive to be purely ornamental plants. If I said I didn't like dahlias, would you hold that against me? Mia Zielinski changed my mind about these tuberous perennials when I spoke to her about her Silver medal winning display. The Melbourne Polytechnic student told me that this flower is the national emblem of Mexico, and that it is both ornamental and edible. What's not to like about that?! Yep, the tuber of this plant was a food source for both the Aztecs and Mayans, and the flower was used in their ceremonies.

Mia says that every plant within this garden is native to Mexico and is available in Australia too as we have many similarities in climates. Sone if these plants are already old favourites in our country. In no particular order, think sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), Mexican asters (Cosmos bipinnatus), century plants (Agave spp.), stonecrops (here = Sedum mexicanum 'Gold Mound'), ponytail palms (Beaucarnea recurvata) or the magnificent old lady cactus (Mamillaria hahnaria). I could go on!

If you like Mia's quirky, creative and colourful style (her own words!), you can find her on Instagram.

BONUS STOPS! Therapeutic horticulture

In addition to visiting the display gardens, Ludovic and I also went on a tour, led by Therapeutic Horticulture Australia (THA), during which we learnt about gardening’s restorative power. This tour introduced some of the contemporary applications and science supporting the growing field of therapeutic horticulture. So, now I am going to extend 'my tour' so that we may explore how some of the Show gardens were designed to enhance health and wellbeing. Note that this secion is lighter on plantlife detail.

As you view each photo, I will instead ask you to imagine how you can engage each of the five senses in each of the gardens 'visited' here:

• Sight (vision) – the ability to see, detected by the eyes

• Hearing (audition) – the ability to hear, detected by the ears

• Smell (olfaction) – the ability to detect odours, detected by the nose

• Taste (gustation) – the ability to perceive flavours, detected by the tongue

• Touch (tactile sense) – the ability to feel pressure, temperature, pain, and texture, detected by the skin

Wurundjeri Biik Baan

Designed by the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation Elders, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, and SKL Gardens, ‘Wurundjeri biik baan’ is a celebration of water country, and an opportunity to experience a sliver of the interconnected swamps, rivers and marshes that defined Naarm/Melbourne prior to colonial settlement. Its designers invite us to imagine the land as Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung ancestors lived it, and a call to heal and care for Country and its waterways.

For me the most important message I can share here is to ask you to remember that as humans we are part of Country, not separate to it. We can only really care for Country as Country, because everything we do to the land, sea and water eventually impacts us. Do you know that I am even reluctant to use the word landscape as this concept can be seen to imply the absence of humans. Anyway, perhaps a philosophical discussion for another time ...

For more information about this garden and the plants featured in Wurundjeri biik baan, please click here.

Nostalgia

Designed by Paul Pritchard from Paul Pritchard Landscape Design, this garden received a Gold medal and the Mark Bence Construction Award. Paul says this garden was inspired by his father, who passed away last year, after suffering dementia.

For more information about this garden and the plants featured in Nostalgia, please click here.

Yutori

Designed by Christian Jenkins and Bailyn Jenkins, this garden received a Silver medal. Christian is big on mental health and wellbeing. Here he embraces the Japanese philosophy of slowing down to simply be. Yutori features a sauna, ice bath, and tiny home, redefining wellness within a serene Japanese landscape.

For more information about this garden and the plants featured in Yutori, please click here.

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Well, I hope that 'my tour' has satisfied your curiosity for now. Although not as footsore as when I actually visited the Show in person, my fingers are feeling weary. If you want more inspiration, check out the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show online (website, Facebook, Instagram). Or go one better and follow the designers listed here and give them a like too!

If you like what you saw and would like to do similar in Tasmania, then why not reach out to us?

À bientôt !

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