I thought I would elaborate more on what Judy and I do for garden clubs.

With garden presentations I have a laptop, projector and large screen which we take with us.

I now have three visual Power Point presentations at the moment; all go for approx 45 minutes to one hour depending on questions.

The visual presentations from first to last are ‘Smart Sub Tropical gardening’, ‘A Passion for Plants’ and saving the best for last ‘Bizarre and Beautiful Botanicals’. I am now compiling a new presentation entitled ‘A Garden Journey’.

We do bring up to seven trays of plants to sell at very reasonable prices and usually donate a nice plant for the clubs raffle.

We have travelled as far as Tweed Heads, Kilcoy, Maleny and Boonah Garden Clubs.

The feedback from the presentations has always been very good.

I have a very popular garden blog found at: http://ianjudy.blogspot.com.au/ it will also direct you to my Garden Product Review and Photo Album sites.

In regard to bus trips we are more than happy to accommodate visitors on bus tours.

We have had to raise the entry fee to our garden due to the high cost of public liability insurance.

Visitors are charged a nominal fee of $4.00 which goes towards covering the cost of the insurance.

We have two urn’s boiling when visitors arrive and have a large patio area where visitors can sit and have morning tea.

Most bus trips bring their own food; we are happy to supply milk, sugar, coffee and tea.

We let visitors use our laundry toilet.

We have large range of beautiful plants for sale at very reasonable prices.

We recommend at the very minimum a 1.5 hour stay, most clubs stay for the morning then depart for lunch.

Our contact email address is iwintle@bigpond.net.au

There is plenty to see at our one acre garden and it does not really matter if clubs visit more than once as there are different things to see each season and I am always doing projects to make the garden better.

Judy and I do our utmost to make visitors feel welcome, that’s why we call our garden a ‘Giving Garden’.

After they finish with us I recommend they go to ‘Lagoon View Gardens’ nursery situated at Lagoon View Road, Redland Bay.

Peter and Genya Robinson are the owners and have created a stunning display garden situated between two beautiful lagoons.

I can honestly say this venue is well worth going to. Their phone numbers are 0408181970 or 0732068169.

May 2013 Garden News

Well here it is, the first day of winter and I can tell you I am frightened.

Why you may ask?

Well since July last year we had no rain in August, September and October, has 70 mills in November and none in December and January. February we had 15 mills, so all summer we only had a tiny splatter of rain. In March we had 100 mills, none in April and 10 mills in May.

Winter is our dry season, the ground is dry and our tanks are virtually empty, that is why I am frightened, so many plants to try and keep alive.

Stafford Garden Club visited this month and we hosted a meeting of the ‘International Cordyline Society’where I gave a presentation 'A Passion for Plants'.

Only one other presentation this month and that was to the ‘Ascot/Clayfield Garden Club’.

I have not been able to do a lot in the garden this month as my disabled son and his family has moved into a new home which needs retaining walls, fencing, landscaping and all the other jobs that he cannot do. Of course Dad has volunteered to do it all. That’s what you have to do for your family.

It’s such a busy life at the moment.

Another garden problem is the pesky possum it having a great feed of our Custard Apple crop and is intent on not letting us get any. I have bought a trap but Mr Possum is avoiding it, preferring Custard Apple to any other fruit.

My youngest son and his family have just left and are touring Australia for the next two years, it's probably the best time for them before the children start school, we will miss them terribly, but will keep in touch through their 'This is our Australia' web site and Facebook page. Their two dogs will be living with us.
Link to their website. http://www.thisisouraustralia.com/

April Garden News

I suppose the big news is about our November Open Garden.

We received our information sheet from ‘Open Gardens Australia’ and to our shock the admission fee for our garden has risen to $10.00 per person.

We did realise that the normal fee was to go to $8.00 and were prepared to open for that price remembering that the Open Garden Scheme keep 65% of all gate takings that now go for administration purposes.

We then asked around and found that most gardens were opening for $8.00, ours was evidently a so called ‘special garden’. I suppose it was deemed that because of the numbers of visitors we get through the gate (we usually get between 600 to 900 visitors).

On principle we told ‘Open Gardens Australia ‘that we would open for $8.00 but certainly not $10.00 as after twelve openings we know our visitors and two of the most asked questions at the entry gate are “why is it so much” and “where does the money go”, Judy and I both agree that a $10.00 entry fee would see a lot of visitors just walk away.
‘Open Gardens Australia’ refused to compromise, so with regret we have pulled out of the scheme and I have resigned as a selector.

I am told (and know) how hard it is to get new gardens to open, but it seems they would rather lose our garden and its numbers rather than agree to a compromise.

It is very strange as ‘Open Gardens Australia’ would have received around $4,000 if we had charged $8 and had the usual amount of people through the gate.
I must admit to feeling a bit let down as we have opened through the scheme eleven times and now it's take it or leave it.

So that was that, we are leaving the scheme and  have now contacted the ‘Lions Club’ and offered them the chance to raise money for a specific charity, they of course jumped at the chance.
I have now heard that they are allowing gardens that were listed as $10 entry to reduce that to $8 entry, how crazy is that?

The Lions Club will also do the catering and run a raffle.

We will be opening our garden on the 22 and 23rd of November and it will raise money for the ‘Lions Club for a specific worthwhile cause.

Hopefully we will get some decent publicity; I will be promoting the opening as I usually do.

We had a bus tour through the garden on my Birthday, it was a church group from North Brisbane, they enjoyed the garden, no garden presentations this month but some coming up in May.

Stafford Garden Club also visited the garden, this was their second visit but as I always say “there’s always something new in this garden”.

I have again been very busy in the garden building Judy a new shade area to store her plants and a new storage bin for the potting mix.

April has been extremely dry with only 5 mills of rain. I am really worried about going into winter with some empty water tanks hopefully we will get some rain before too long.

March 2014 Garden News

The first gardening presentation for the month was to the Clairmont Garden Club situated at Park Ridge, and then we had a bus load from the Gold Coast Rose Society and finally a presentation to the Maleny Garden Club.

On our way to Maleny everything was brown, not a blade of green grass anywhere, we start climbing towards Maleny and everything suddenly turns green, wow what a sight for sore eyes.

The presentation went very well, the members were very friendly and said my presentation was the best they have had, which was very nice.

We left Maleny Garden Club and were nearly wiped out by an oncoming vehicle whose back wheels lost traction and headed towards us, fortunately it was a near miss and we escaped unscathed.

We then headed to see Maureen Simons at Mt Towen Tropicals to (yes, you guessed it) to buy some more gingers and Heliconia’s.

What a busy month it has been with lots of new work done in the garden, first job was to dig all the Day Lilys out then remove all the old soil and replace with new, then replant the Day Lilys.

My second major job was to pull apart the ‘Caladium Corner’ and completely start again and making it much bigger and tidier, this involved taking out all the old pavers, rocks and sleepers making the pathway longer and putting pebbles in.

I then replaced some of the rocks and sleepers making the ground level much higher and level, pointed between the rocks and then filling up with soil.

I had just finished replacing all the rocks in the garden pathways (1000s) raising them up and making them straight and building up the soil behind them.

I have now started another project, but that can wait to April’s blog post.

Up to the 25^th March we were dry with virtually NO summer rain, well we finally received 100 mills which was most welcome, we finally have some water in our tanks, not full but great anyway. Now we are just hoping for some follow up rain.

It truly amazes me how quickly plants adapt after rain the grass is green and growing and the garden plants are looking healthier than they have done for the past eight months.

I have done quite a bit of replanting in the garden and hopefully with a little rain in the spring the garden will look great for our opening.

The last eight months has been a very stressful time with rain coming only three times.

February 2014 Garden News

Firstly I would like to say thank you to the 100,000 plus readers from across the world (over 105 countries) for supporting this gardening blog.
Well, summer is over and what a summer it has been.

I have never known gardening times to be so bad, even worse than in the drought.

Summer is supposed to be our wet season where we get all our tanks filled so we can last the dry winter.

Not this year, it has only rained twice in the last three months and even then there was not enough moisture to soak through the mulch.

Our Grandchildren always like to help.

Since last July it rained twice in November, once in January and one spit in February.

All our seven tanks are empty and we are now using town water to keep our plants alive.

Whoever said gardening was a relaxing hobby?

My torch Gingers are looking shocking, someone said they had a borer but on inspection I cannot find any sign of borer, anyway I am spraying them with Crown 225 systemic spray to try and save them. Hopefully it will work.

I gave two gardening presentations during the month, one to ‘Indooroopilly Garden Club’ and one to the ‘Society for growing potted plants’.

With the latter club I was able to call into a fruit shop at New Farm and purchase some ‘Achachas ‘ which is a new fruit from North Queensland and tasted great.

WE have to dig all our Day Lily’s out as the soil we planted them in a couple of years ago was too organic and they have dried up and shrivelled, we have lost quite a few.

I am now in the process of removing the Day Lily’s putting them in temporary pots and digging a trench to replant them in good soil.

Talking about soil, I tested the last load of soil I had brought in and found it had a PH of 9 which is of course alkaline, mind you it looked really nice and smelt good also.

I then went to all the local Landscaping yards and took samples of their soils, they varied in PH from 4 to 9 and most of the employees had no idea of what PH was.

I finally found a soil and sand mix that had a ph of 5.5 so I am going to order that to plant the Day Lily’s in.

WE had a great crop of Mango’s and are picking Carambolas at the moment. Some fruit trees love the dry weather and some hate it especially Lychees and Longans.

No pecan Nuts this year as the few that were on the trees were eaten by the Cockatoos.