We've been planting the wrong plants and gardens. For too many years we have been planting the bush in suburbia or the picture book English garden in our much hotter and drier Australian climate, leading to poor plant selection and a lack of success in our gardens.
We've also been tempted into buying plants, not for their form and foliage but for their instant appeal in pots, at the local hardware warehouse. Our plant supply has moved from specialist grower gardeners to mass production driven nurseries retailing through chain stores where gregarious colour, shelf appeal and deliverability reign over taste and harmony. Mass production also leads to uniformity over diversity, so everyone's gardens start to look like similar carpets of outrageous colour, peaking in pots and declining in the garden.
To create a truly beautiful garden you can fall in love with, gardeners now need to find great, garden-worthy plants, choose a season for flowering, select a range of heights and textures (rather than dwarfing bulbous flower heads) and learn a little about how to mix 'this goes with that' to ensure a harmonious, successful and creative garden. Below are some garden ideas that will help you select the plants, make the combinations and give you a plan and some gardening tips to help you create a garden you can enjoy.
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1. Mixing spring and summer flowering plants.
2. Mixing plants with different watering and soil needs.
3. Buying on impulse and mixing too many colours together.
4. Planting Eucalypts in the home garden.
5. Planting bedding plants.
6. Choosing one dimensional plants.
7. Only planting for flowers, not multi-dimensional plants.
8. Focusing just on the plants, not on the soil.
9. Choosing the wrong plants for your climate.
10. Food without beauty.
