SubTropical Queensland Open Garden

A one acre Sub Tropical garden situated just east of Brisbane. We have opened our garden to the public for 18 years. We open in November to aid a specific charity. On this weekend get a lot of pleasure meeting fellow gardeners. Judy sells many rare plants and this helps us to do more projects and buy more plants. Judy and I are 'plants-people'and cannot resist buying something rare that we do not have. It has been very hard gardening as we seem to be in a severe drought most years.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Amorphophallus titanum

Totally Wild TV show. This is the Amorphophallus titanum grown by John and Genny Catlan from Jacobs Well, Queensland.

Totally Wild Garden Segment

Totally Wild filmed here earlier this year. This segment was shown in May on Channel 10.
WE were very happy about the way it was done as it featured our Grand Children in the garden.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

June 2012 Garden News

What a rotten month it has been. I have had the flu and am now in my fourth week of coughing and sneezing and this is just a couple of weeks after having a flu vaccination.

Needless to say not a lot has been done in the garden.

It’s a good job we have not had any bus tours here this month.

I did attend a meeting of the Ipswich Bromeliad Society’ and gave a presentation on ‘Smart Sub Tropical Gardening’.

I have now started to prepare a third presentation ‘Bizarre and Beautiful Botanicals’, I am up to 100 slides already and it’s going to be a very stunning power point.

Our friends John and Genny Catlan are to appear on ‘Gardening Australia’ sometime in August, this will be a very interesting segment.

After seeing John and Genny we called into ‘Greenfingers’ and collected a metre of their great potting mix, also had a look at their premium organic soil, it looked good so I ordered a truck load to be delivered.

I have reviewed their potting mix and premium soil on my review site at http://www.gardenproductreviews.com/

We hope to dig out all our Day Lily’s and put them back into this good soil, that’s if there’s any left as our Grand Children have found the heap and the Tonka trucks ect are having a busy time, that’s ok as children should be allowed to play in the dirt.

We had a trip to Caboolture to see some friends who have a wonderful nursery full of orchids, bromeliads ect.

Not a lot has been done in our garden this month due to sickness although I did manage to spread a couple of metres of crusher dust to build up the pathways.

It is very dull and wet here here, Brisbane is the coldest it has been for 10 years but the winter rain is of course welcome.
We have had 100 mills or four inches during the last week of this month.

Thursday, June 07, 2012

Worsleya procera.

Wow, almost at the 20,000 visitor mark from well over 100 different countries.
It's great to see that our garden has been viewed so many times, isn't the wide world web wonderful when we can share our beautiful garden with so many others.
I have just bought the latest issue of 'Sub Tropical Gardening' magazine and note with interest the article on the 'Blue Hippeastrum' or Worsleya procera.

It's a good article but I feel it does not give enough credit to John and Genny Catlan who are perhaps the best growers of this plant in Australia, they have a magnificent collection of both mature and young plants all propagated by John and Genny.
Hopefully Gardening Australia will do a feature on them, they will make for Great Television.
Have a look at my review site.
http://www.gardenproductreviews.com/

Saturday, June 02, 2012

May 2012 Garden New's

This month our garden featured on Channel 10s ‘Totally Wild’, they did a great job and we were very pleased with the segment.

You too can see it on this link: http://ten.com.au/totally-wild-tw20-077.htm ,we are on after the lizards.

This month we had the Sunshine Coast fern and Foliage Society visit the garden and then we had a fairly long trip to give a presentation to the Kilcoy Garden Club, they were most hospitable as most country people are and offered us lunch before we left. We just got home in time to watch our garden feature on ‘Totally Wild’.

Mattress Button Plant

Haemanthus alba

Curly Poinsettisa

Mussaenda 'Dona Luz'

We now have a bit of a break until the next garden visit so I have started some serious fruit tree pruning and have stripped a couple of gardens to start afresh.

Sunshine Coast Fern and Foliage Society

Gardening is all about renewal and change and I have been doing quite a bit of that this month with room made for lots of new plants.

I have brought in trailer loads of organic soil, mushi compost and crusher dust to do all the jobs that need doing.

Our first Grand-Daughter turned three and we gave her a very special Birthday, we will soon have three Grand-Daughters and one Grand-Son, they have really changed our lives for the better.

Sophie

Friday is our day off gardening as we look after the Grand-Children this day and we find it more tiring than if we had worked all day in the garden.

How did I ever find time to go to work?

Hog Plum

Triplaris

Thursday, May 03, 2012

April Garden News

What a big month April has been.

First lot of visitors were from Logan Garden Club, then a field trip by members of Redlands Horticultural Society, Next were the Bribie Island Garden Club followed by a meeting of ‘Australia’s Open garden’ selectors.

Judy and I drove to Toowoomba so I could join the Retired Police Dog Handlers on the ANZAC day march, that was great and I was able to catch up with people I had not seen for 25 years. I will be doing that again for sure.

I am refurbishing three gardens, taking old plants out and putting in new soil and compost then new plants, it’s all about reviving and renewing the garden on a fairly regular basis.

It is also the time where I have to start a lot of pruning, I have been holding off due to the large amount of visitors we have been having, but seeing as there is only one more bus trip until August I will get started soon.

The dreaded Black Lily Grub has been busy eating the Hippaestrums , these are our worst pest in the garden.

We had six inches of rain last week, it has rained off and on for weeks now and I really need to do some spraying.

Monday, April 02, 2012

March 2012 Garden News

What a big month for Judy and I.

First was a visit to ‘Rose Lovers Society’ at Keperra it was a good visit as they enjoyed the presentation and bought a lot of Judy’s plants.

Then we went out to ‘Karana Downs Garden Club’, again a good visit.

Next was a drive out to ‘Forest Lake Garden Club’, this was an evening presentation so we were quite late home.

Our last presentation for the month was ‘Robina Garden Club’; this was a long day as we had to sit and wait a few hours before I could do my presentation.

We had visitors from ‘get up and Go’, Forest Lake Garden Club’ and ‘Oxley Garden Club’.

So, as you can see we had a very busy month and April looks like it will be just as busy.

For the bus trips we clear the back patio, put chairs out and have an urn boiling, plus plants for sale.

I had a new gardening book arrive from Amazon, it’s called ‘Bizarre Botanicals’ and it’s a great book, surprisingly we have a lot of the plants featured in it.

One thing I did learn was why a bat plant is so called, it’s not the flower but the seed pod (picture attached).

Lots of pruning done, we have had quite a wet summer and all the fruit trees have grown so much that not much light was getting through to the understory, so I had to make some openings where the light could reach the plants. If you don’t do this then you risk a diseased tree.

Zingiber 'Golden Glory' beehive measured 35 cm high, looked amazing.

I am in the process of raising part of the pool fence and the turning the existing garden into another ‘Caladium Corner’ as we now have a great source of new Caladiums.