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ONE WEEK OF WINTER LEFT This year has whizzed by, and the fun is about to start.  There is a lot  of anticipation and expectation this season, probably more so than ever after the disappointment of last time.  There was just too much rain.  My hope that things will be different this year is due to the shift from a soggy La Nina to a …...

The great reset  …once I finish coughing! This year has been really light on the gardening – it has been maintained but that is about it.  The combination of a horribly wet start to the year curtailed most gardening efforts because I wasn’t in a hurry to garden in torrential rain and working with sodden soil is never a good idea.   The other thing was …...

Now is a good time to start to organise for the new growing season.  With hope in my heart, I began taking dreaming about the next season to the next level and started making plans.  Last season was a complete washout – literally!  I only used my irrigation system a couple of times.  Ironically, the only time it should have been used but wasn’t, was …...

You may or may not have noticed, but I’ve been missing in action here on my blog and for good reason.  I handed it over to the loveliest person on Fivver who did a bit of an update for me.  I’m a gardener not a technical whiz and I knew I wanted to update the look of the blog but was frozen with fear for …...

I opened my garden up to the public so they could come and see what I had created. But not everyone could come, so I decided to do a virtual tour, replicating the tour from the open day, while the garden was still looking great so no one misses out. So sit back and enjoy a personal tour of my garden. It is a little …...

Out here on the coast the sandy soil is pretty much held in place with the kikuyu grass, especially on the hills and I have no problem with this.  The last thing we need is erosion or even worse – a blow out, where the wind whips away the sand causing a deep hole.  Once you get a blow out it can be difficult to …...

Historically May has been my least productive month.  I prematurely convinced myself that it is close enough to winter that I might as well just settle down in the warmth and cosiness of indoors and wait for things to get better outside.  The thing is, May isn’t really that bad in the grand scheme of things and it should really be spent finishing off projects …...

I’ve done loads of things in the garden lately and it feels really good.  Up until recently my garden time has been limited and to be honest I didn’t realise how much I’d been missing it until I was fully up to my elbows in dirt, ripping out weeds.  There are a few areas in the garden that have slipped into a shameful state, and …...

I always start the year with good intentions and normally by now my new year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside.  However there is no rule to say this is the only time of year you can try to reset things and so I’m taking the opportunity with the start of a new month to be more focused and intentional with telling you about the …...

I’ve been away again.  I suspect it will happen a lot this year – the stars have aligned to make 2023 the year of travel for us.  I don’t mind, so long as the garden still gets what it needs and remains productive and in control, with opportunities for exciting projects, and that I can squeeze in some horticultural goodness while out and about. And …...

A pinch and a punch for the first of the month and no returnsies.   (Such a strange tradition!)  But here we are celebrating the start of a new season.  As much as I can’t believe we have arrived at March already having lived through the first two months of this year that still feels quite new. Ordinarily I would be bemoaning the fact that it …...

I’ve been away – not for long, but just long enough to soak in a few days of someone else’s summer, which was a lot better than ours.   I got away to Flinders, outside of Melbourne for three days for all things gardening, hanging out with my fellow Botanical Guides from the fab tour company Botanica World Discoveries.  It is a privilege to be counted …...

The answer to this is ‘Yes it could’.  There is plenty of room for improvement.  We barely set things right after the last storm and here we are again with an even bigger one, that was even more destructive as there was wind in its midst. I am grateful to say we survived the storm unscathed.   For the most part the winds were blocked by …...