Tag: Collectors Plant Fair

Greenwalls from detailed to heroic !!!

Happy Winter Garden Lovers and I thought would show you just a brief to the Greenwall evolution, since they tick so many boxes for many clients in terms of space saving and maximum impact.. !

Grow Bands give precise feature to otherwise blank walls by bringing the luxuriance of rich textural contrasts for year round interest, to meet all converging sight lines from inside & outside.

Facing north, this combination is resilient to harsh high summer scorch and reduces visual glare and ‘push-back’ from the built environment, with welcome relief that only living plants can bring. It’s courtyard setting now leverages egress to it’s adjacent kitchen by doubling entertainment space, bringing the outside in and the inside out.

Measuring 9 x 3.5m this double sided greenwall in the great divide between private step out space on the house side and an impressive sense of arrival to the drive side.

Give us privacy and feature without taking up useful space, that was the brief for this split level design with a higher point of access off the rear lane. So a super sized double sided Greenwall was borne from necessity, to bring an intimate scale shielded on the house side from tall office buildings AND an impressive welcome to this drive side in approach.

So many apartment step out spaces requiring a ‘soft down’ to bring foliage relief to a hard-fest of built environment surfaces.

‘I would go out there more often but there’s really nothing to entice.’

A very common part of the apartment living experience, especially when all views are equally experienced from inside … no ? Enter a swish end wall greenwall, a slimmer counterpoint from the B/room slides and a free standing part rail Grow Band and all is lush and inviting. All are self irrigated and combine with cac & succ combinations for the built in planters suited to the N/W aspect. Bring on the cocktails !!!!

Greenwall Company by Mark Paul for Paradisus www.peternixon.com.au

Winter Sparkles …

Aloe ‘Venus’ a winter happy mound
to around 80cm tall

Garden Lovers, winter may be cool but never dull, when you know some hard working star performers to bring easy charm to your garden.

Cymbidium ‘Ice Cascade’ hybrid plant also excellent for baskets

Who would have thought we’d be imagining a cool, wet winter back in the bush fires of March Garden Lovers ? Anyway, here we are savouring the delights of planting that favours wintertime in the cool sub-tropics. Lower temps are the trigger for many of these to come into flower, or simply have such late flowering periods they can extend into the winter.

Aechmea wilkleri like little orange Christmas Trees tilted over ..

Many make excellent planting for containers like the bromeliads & cymbidium orchids that you may like to bring inside to enjoy their flowers as part of the house interior ..

Hibiscus mutabilis – Rose of Sharon

Others burst into seasonal interest like Hibiscus mutabilis and Tibouchina ‘David Bowen’ for the mixed shrub border. Cut to shape after flowers to ensure a good spring flush to support flowers that can extend into the June garden …

Tibouchina ‘David Bowen’ a late white flowering hybrid into early winter

And don’t forget cool weather warm bulbs like the species hippeastrums H. aulicum & H. psittacinum for stained glass colour sparkles in the semi-shade garden.

Hippeastrum psitticinum a sparkling Brazilian jewel that grows as an epiphyte on ‘Sea-Changer’s’ mirror deck greenwalls
Hippeastrum aulicum clumping forward of the mixed shrub border – and thanks to Susan Trathen for these seedlings she raised me from her own
Balgowlah Heights garden

The element of surprise is often forgotten in cool subtrops gardens, easily remedied with summer humidity hardy South African bulbs from the Fynbos.

Sparaxis grandiflora ssp. acutiloba an easy fynbos bulb for our winter gardens

Cool Subtrops Talk for Sydney Gardens

Don’t forget I’ll be giving a talk at the re-scheduled springtime dates for Collectors Plant Fair ’20 – 1pm Saturday, 26th September, Hawkesbury Race Course expressly on my Sydney cool subtropics gardens, to help you make a better garden with planting that’s a fit to the growing conditions you have in your own home garden. Mark your planners & buy your tix online now to avoid the cue !!